If music be the food of love, you can have you cake and eat it – take your ice-pick. Autumnal mellow melodrama and on the edge of your seats frightfulness is a guaranteed given as casting for both Touching the Void and Twelfth Night is announced. It heralds the first two-production partnership between leading regional theatrical powerhouses, Bristol Old Vic and The Lyceum, Edinburgh.
Two of modern theatre’s greatest storytellers – Bristol Old Vic’s Artistic Director Tom Morris and Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh’s Artistic Director David Greig – work together for the first time on world premiere Touching the Void. Rising stars Josh Williams and Edward Hayter will play climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates respectively in this world premiere.
Twelfth Night will open The Lyceum’s 2018/19 season before transferring to Bristol Old Vic as the second autumn co-production between the two theatres.
Tom Morris (The Grinning Man, Swallows & Amazons, War Horse) will direct the first stage version of Touching the Void, adapted by David Greig (The Events, The Suppliant Women, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
This production marks the first time the two Artistic Directors have creatively collaborated and marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Joe Simpson’s best-selling memoir, charting his battle back from the brink of death on the treacherous Siula Grande Mountain.
Alongside this struggle is the appalling dilemma of his climbing partner Simon Yates, perched on an unstable snow-cliff, clinging onto the rope tying him to the severely injured Joe. Unable to recover Joe from the void, Simon is faced with the agonising decision to cut the rope that binds them…
Twelfth Night
The second co-production between the award-winning theatres will be Shakespeare’s perfect comedy Twelfth Night, will be directed by The Lyceum’s Associate Artist Wils Wilson (The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, Cockpit, The Lyceum; The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, National Theatre of Scotland; Scuttlers, Manchester Royal Exchange).
This gender-bending interpretation, widely considered to be one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies, stars award-winning comedy and cabaret performance artist Christopher Green as ‘Malvolio’. Christopher is best-known for his enduring and endearing characters Tina C and Ida Barr, and experimental theatre works such as Office Party, VIP, The Razzle and This Show Has No Name.
He is joined by Jade Ogugua as ‘Viola’ (How to Act, National Theatre of Scotland; The Barnbow Canaries, West Yorkshire Playhouse; The Tempest, Northern Stage and Oxford Playhouse) and Colette Dalal Tchantcho as ‘Orsino’ (Eddie and the Slumber Sisters, National Theatre of Scotland and Catherine Wheels; In My Own Words, Complicité).
Speaking earlier in the week, David Greig said: “It is a real pleasure to be working with Bristol Old Vic on these two very different plays, and a joy to be in partnership with a theatre that absolutely shares both our delight in adventure and our love of classic theatre.”
https://lyceum.org.uk/whats-on/production/touching-the-void
https://lyceum.org.uk/whats-on/production/twelfth-night
