by Nick Ward
Directed by Ben Kidd
Designed by Paul Burgess. Lighting by Gary Bowman.
Music by Toby Knowles. Produced by India Rakusen
Cast: Michael Brogan. Nicola Harrison. Michael Irving. Amy Loughton.
Presented by Little Noise in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre
The first ever revival of Nick Ward’s award winning play
Sundays and Mondays, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28 and 29 June 2009
“It ain’t right to take away a man’s job when he’s worked for you all his life…I don’t know about your commercial necessity, but I do know that…”
George Sutton has forged a life tending and clearing the waterlogged Fenlands for a local landowner. When he loses his job, he searches in vain to find a purpose and a sense of self worth...
A dark, poetic exploration of the effects of unemployment on a family, drawing on a simple, beautiful storytelling style and using live music.
Apart From George opened at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987, and subsequently played at the Royal Court Theatre, on a national tour of the UK and in New York City. The original cast included the late Katrin Cartlidge, a regular collaborator of the writer-director. The play won Nick Ward the prestigious George Devine Award in 1988. This production is the first ever revival.
Playwright Nick Ward was born in Geelong, Australia, in 1962. His first plays as writer/director won three Fringe Firsts at the Edinburgh Festival. He subsequently wrote and directed The Strangeness of Others (National Theatre). Other plays include Eastwood (Time Out Award, 1986), and The Present (Bush Theatre), as well as The Cenci, commissioned by Almeida Opera, and a translation of A Doll’s House which he also directed (Leicester Haymarket). His radio work includes Trouble Sleeping with Jim Broadbent and Patricia Routledge (BBC Radio 3). He has also written and directed two films, Dakota Road (Channel 4) and Look Me in the Eye (BBC). Nick currently works primarily as a songwriter and musician, and is in the process of returning to the theatre with his new company Nick Ward Scenarios.
The cast includes Michael Brogan. Nicola Harrison. Michael Irving. Amy Loughton. Michael Brogan's credits include Joe Guy (Soho Theatre), Hamlet (Merlin Theatre), Dealer’s Choice (Salisbury Playhouse and National Theatre), Chips With Everything (National Theatre) and in repertory theatre all over the UK including the Dukes Theatre, Lancaster, Glasgow Citizens, Theatre Royal Plymouth, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Clwyd Theatr Cymru; Nicola Harrison's recent credits include Tryst and Once Upon a Dragon (Grid Iron), The Unconquered (Stellar Quines), The Glass Menagerie (Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh), and Ravenhill for Breakfast, Paradise Lost and War of the Worlds (Paines Plough); Michael Irving started the original Half Moon Theatre in 1970 and has been acting on stage, screen and TV for more than 30 years. Stage credits include leading roles at the Half Moon, Royal Court, Kings Head Theatre, Theatre Royal York , Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith , Northcott Theatre, Exeter , Derby Playhouse, Queens Theatre Hornchurch and Sheffield Crucible Theatre . Film includes Ridley Scott’s first film The Duellists and Personal Services. Television includes Coronation Street, EastEnders, The Bell Run, The Mouse In The Corner, The Bill and Bulman; Amy Loughton's stage credits include The Lesson (Old Red Lion Theatre and International Tour), Angel and Accidents (New End Theatre, Hampstead), and Teechers (Bridewell Theatre), and television including Holby City, Doctors, Tonight with Trevor Macdonald, and the BBC’s forthcoming production of Emma.
Director Ben Kidd has been a Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre during 2008. He originally trained as an actor at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and worked as an actor at BAC, for the National Theatre of Scotland, and in ITV1’s He Kills Coppers. As a director, he has assisted Carrie Cracknell on I Am Falling (Gate Theatre) and Edward Dick on Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe), and worked on the Young People’s Theatre scheme at BAC. Apart From George will be his professional debut as a director.
Apart From George is the debut production by Little Noise, a new theatre company committed to exploring voices seldom heard in mainstream media – the voice of the everyday, and the poetry of the mundane.
The Press on the Original Production
“Nick Ward emerges as an artist with two priceless gifts: the ability to 'play' the stage like a musical instrument, and to make the theatre speak through inarticulate characters.” Irving Wardle, The Times
“Ward commands the resonant simplicity that is one of a writers rarest gifts.” Michael Ratcliffe, The Observer
“Bleak and beautifully spare…Mr Ward shows us how much a good play can convey through few words and eloquent action…A writer to watch.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“Look out, wherever you are, for Nick Ward’s Apart From George…the stuff of genuine drama.” Kenneth Hurran, Mail on Sunday
The Press on Apart From George
“We tend to bury the recent past. So all credit to the Finborough for reviving this forgotten Fenland tragedy by the Australian writer Nick Ward, who made a big impact on the London fringe in the late 1980s.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“One thing is clear from this revival of Nick Ward’s 1987 play: the Finborough certainly has impeccable timing. As the current recession gathers steam, this tragedy centred around one man’s redundancy provides a strong and very deliberate contemporary impact.” Charlotte Stretch, Whatsonstage
“It's a bleakly powerful piece about word-hoarding isolation that makes one regret Ward's own theatrical silence over the last two decades.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“I was reminded of a rural version of Edward Bond's Saved, where the reduction of language to a blunt instrument and the inability to express feeling lead inexorably to violence.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“This hour-long piece reminds us of Ward's gift for creating a potent poetic atmosphere with a minimum of words, and for suggesting a direct link between lonely landscapes and emotional inarticulacy.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“Some carefully crafted and subtle performances” Sebastian Melmott, Remotegoat
“A solid, visually satisfying piece of theatre.” Charlotte Stretch, Whatsonstage
“Undeniably potent and moving.” Charlotte Stretch, Whatsonstage
“Ben Kidd, who recently graduated from assistant directorship of strong Finborough productions Cradle Me and Captain Oates’ Left Sock, does an excellent job” Charlotte Stretch, Whatsonstage
“Kidd is a talented director, able to deliver sufficiently compelling flourishes” Charlotte Stretch, Whatonstage
“Michael Brogan is excellent as George, stumbling through the play like some wounded bull.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“Played with great weight and conviction by Micheal Brogan” Sebastian Melmott, Remotegoat
“Michael Brogan is a deeply affecting George, both pitiful and frightening. His bullish delivery immediately captures the unquestioning arrogance of a rural tyrant and yet we still feel sorry for him through his demise.” Paul Vale, The Stage
“Amy Loughton is superb as the unsettled teenager desperate to leave home.” Paul Vale, The Stage
“Both Loughton and Harrison share a nervous energy that resonates throughout the play affecting the tone and colouring the drama” Paul Vale, The Stage
“There is staunch support from Nicola Harrison as his angry wife, Amy Loughton as his abused daughter, and Michael Irving as both the ineffectual vicar and the widowed farmer.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“Michael Irving plays both the ineffectual country vicar who is unable to help George with his problem and gentleman farmer who has to make him redundant. Irving’s characters are the living conscience of rural England, while George remains the ugly truth.” Paul Vale, The Stage
“The Exceptionally talented Amy Loughton” Sebastian Melmott, Remotegoat
“Michael Brogan, in particular, is able to convey George’s sense of uselessness and melancholy even in total stillness. Indeed, it is in his quietest moments that George’s desperation is most persuasive, and most heartbreaking.” Charlotte Stretch, Whatsonstage
“Loughton impressively balances fiery, hormonal aggression with more complex tinges of vulnerability and longing.” Charlotte Stretch, Whatsonstage
“Catch it while you can - hopefully it won't be more than 20 years until the next production of this slight, but heavily layered, play.” Sebastian Melmott, Remotegoat
