by David Mercer
Directed by Kirsty Housley
Designed by Ellan Parry
Sound by Matt Downing
Lighting by Richard Williamson
Presented by The Circuit
Cast includes: David Cann. Jon Foster. Cristina Gavin. Bernard Kay. Guy Lewis.
[ rediscoveries season ]
THE FIRST LONDON REVIVAL OF DAVID MERCER’S POLITICAL MASTERPIECE
23 May - 17 June 2006
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part…and you’ve got to put your bodies up against the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus. And you’ve got to make it stop.” – Mario Savio, Berkeley, 1964
1968. The Eastern Bloc in crisis, America at war, Paris torn apart by riots… The world is in uproar and things will never be the same again. Drama critic Bernard Link has just moved into his new London flat, previously owned by the mysterious Haggerty. Soon Bernard’s calm is shattered by the arrival of Claire - a loud American with child in tow demanding to know the whereabouts of her husband, Haggerty – and Bernard’s father on a visit from Yorkshire, railing at everything from Bernard’s cowardice to “homos and blackies”… As Bernard comes to terms with his travels around the world, his domestic chaos and the experimental theatre troupe that drives him to drink, the packages from Haggerty begin to arrive…
Playwright David Mercer was born in Yorkshire in 1928. Best known for his screen work including the modern classic Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment and In Two Minds, filmed as Family Life by director Ken Loach, Mercer’s plays include Belcher’s Luck, The Buried Man, A Climate of Fear, Cousin Vladimir, Duck Song, Flint, The Governors Lady, Huggy Bear, Let’s Murder Vivaldi, No Limits to Love, Ride a Cock Horse, Then and Now, Where the Difference Begins and You Me and Him. He died in 1980, aged just 52. After Haggerty was first presented by the RSC in 1970 and was Mercer’s first major stage success, and now receives its first ever London revival at the multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre, well known in recent years for its rediscovery of unjustly neglected drama.
Directed by exciting young director Kirsty Housley whose credits include Blue Jam by Chris Morris (Etcetera Theatre, Riverside Studios and BAC) which was named Critics’ Choice by Time Out, Guardian and Evening Standard; Wuthering Heights (BAC), Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, adapted by Simon Block; Nymphs and Shepherds by David Hines; Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello; The Chic Nerds by Ronan O’Donnell (all for the Etcetera Theatre); and, as the first winner of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award in 2003 - Cue Deadly: A Live Film Project (Riverside Studios).
The cast includes David Cann who returns to the Finborough following his acclaimed performance as W.H. Davies in Laura Wade’s adaptation of Young Emma. His many TV and Film credits include Bridget Jones Diary, Brass Eye, Silent Witness, People Like Us, Jam, Black Books, Bad Girls, and Eastenders; Bernard Kay’s many credits include An Inspector Calls, Platonov (Almeida) and TV credits including Foyle’s War, Sweeny!, Dr Who, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, The Avengers and Z Cars; Jon Foster’s credits include A New Way to Please You, Sejanus: His Fall, Speaking Like Magpies, Thomas More (all for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Cristina Gavin appeared at the Finborough in last year’s Etta Jenks – her US TV credits include Babylon 5 and Days of Our Lives; and Guy Lewis whose credits include Telstar (New Ambassadors), Dr Faustus (Royal National Theatre) and The Graduate (Gielgud Theatre).
REVIEWS FOR AFTER HAGGERTY
**** Four Stars, Time Out
“It’s a pleasure to watch this left-wing play from long ago and find it so bracingly sour.” Jeremy Kingston, The Times
“David Mercer’s ambitious and vastly intricate 1970 study of intergenerational conflict, left-wing commitment and personal alienation”.
Robert Shore, Time Out
“This is a big play...[an] ambitious revival”
Robert Shore, Time Out
“This worthwhile reminder of the work of a playwright who is seemingly almost forgotten. The Finborough is often at its best with revivals that rescue forgotten plays from obscurity. This is the first play in Rediscoveries, a season of revivals that promises much with works from Gerhart Hauptmann and Rolf Hochhuth to follow.”
Philip Fisher, British Theatre Guide
“David Mercer was a terrific playwright… Till this welcome revival, opening the Finborough’s Rediscoveries season, only the film Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment has kept his name alive.”
Jeremy Kingston, The Times
“Mercer was one of the generation of mostly Northern writers who had outclassed their parents but suffered guilt for doing so, and in this play he expressed these feelings more ferociously than anywhere else. But as well as being a harshly witty chronicler of parent-child discontents, he was also fiercely political.”
Jeremy Kingston, The Times
“David Cann makes Bernard a wryly lugubrious figure.”
Jeremy Kingston, The Times
“Bernard Kay gives great entertainment value”
Philip Fisher, British Theatre Guide
“Bernard Kay is admirably flinty as this fossilised backbone of the working class.”
Jeremy Kingston, The Times
“The magnificently obstreperous Bernard Kay”
Julia Hickman, Theatreworld Internet Magazine
“An especially moving, original father-son confrontation thanks to Bernard Kay, spruce and granite-like, providing an extraordinarily credible portrait of working class paternalism, and David Cann as Bernard”
Carole Woddis, Rogues and Vagabonds
“After Haggerty… still has much charm and looks back to a historical period that now seems romantically exciting.”
Philip Fisher, British Theatre Guide
“In rescuing this play from oblivion Kirsty Housley’s direction secures our attention”
Jeremy Kingston, The Times
“This is an intelligent production that expresses the liberation of the Sixties whilst retaining the deadly parochial undercurrents that were still present.”
Julia Hickman, Theatreworld Internet Magazine
