Nicholas Hytner’s production of Richard Bean’s Great Britain will transfer to the Theatre Royal Haymarket following its National Theatre run, with performances beginning 10 September 2014. Public booking will open this Friday, 4 July, at 9.30am, for performances until 10 January 2015. Great Britain is designed by Tim Hatley, with video design by 59 Productions, lighting by Neil Austin, music by Grant Olding and sound by Paul Arditti. Casting for the West End run will be announced shortly.
Richard Bean’s fast and furious new play is an anarchic and foul-mouthed satire about the press, the police and the political establishment. Paige Britain is the ambitious young news editor of The Free Press, a tabloid newspaper locked in a never-ending battle for more readers.
Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors, also directed by Nicholas Hytner for the National Theatre and winner of the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Awards for Best New Play, is currently on its third UK tour following runs at the National Theatre, in the West End and on Broadway. His other plays for the National Theatre are England People Very Nice and The Mentalists. Bean has also written The Heretic (Evening Standard Award), Harvest (Critics’ Circle Award), Honeymoon Suite, Under the Whaleback and Toast for the Royal Court (the latter shortly to be revived at the Park Theatre); The Big Fellah for Out of Joint at the Lyric Hammersmith and on tour; and the forthcoming Pitcairn for Out of Joint, Chichester Festival Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe. He adapted David Mamet’s House of Games and wrote a new version of The Hypochondriac for the Almeida Theatre, and has written the book for the new West End musical Made in Dagenham.
Since he became Director of the National in April 2003, Nicholas Hytner has directed Henry V, His Dark Materials, The History Boys, Stuff Happens, Henry IV, Southwark Fair, The Alchemist, The Man of Mode, The Rose Tattoo (with Steven Pimlott), Rafta, Rafta… , Much Ado About Nothing, Major Barbara, England People Very Nice, Phèdre, The Habit of Art, London Assurance, Hamlet, Collaborators, Travelling Light, One Man Two Guvnors, Timon of Athens, People, Cocktail Sticks, Othello and Live from the National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage.
Great Britain received its world premiere at the National Theatre earlier this week.
Cats, the multi Tony and Olivier award-winning musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber is due to return to the West End this year for a very limited run at the London Palladium.