Breaking Baz: Morfydd Clark & Billy Howle Lead Hot Theater Productions In London Dubbed The Angry & Young Season
EXCLUSIVE: Lord of the Rings star Morfydd Clark and Under the Banner of Heaven’s Billy Howle will star in new versions of John Osborn’s Look Back In Anger and Arnold Wesker’s Roots, which will run in rep at London’s Almeida in what has been dubbed the Angry and Young season. Ahead of the season, Romola Garai will appear in Eline Arbo’s adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s exceptional Noble Prize-winning novel The Years.
Roots, with Clark in the central role of Beatie Bryant who returns to her family in Norfolk after living a highly charged political life in London, will run at the Almeida in Islington, North London, from September 10 through November 23, directed by Diyan Zora.
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Howle will take a small part in Roots but in Look Back In Anger, which will run from September 20 through November 23, he’ll play Jimmy Porter, the theater’s original angry young man.
When the play – the first so-called ‘kitchen sink drama’ – opened at the Royal Court in London in 1956, it heralded a new era of contemporary British theater and for a while replaced the staid, safe drawing room comedy.
Wesker wrote Roots in response to Osborn’s scorching commentary on the political and social upheavals that upended post-war Britain.
Further casting in Look Back In Anger, which is directed by Atri Banerjee, will see Ellora Torchia (The Gold) play Alison, Jimmy’s wife, with Clark and Iwan Davies as their friends Helena and Cliff.
Clark described Helena as the “disruptor” to “this already very disturbed relationship” between Jimmy and Alison.
This the first time the Almeida has performed the repertory system, where a cast take roles in more than one play and perform them on alternative nights.
At the time both plays were written, repertory companies performed the length and breadth of Britain. The likes of Judi Dench and Ian McKellen swore by them. Indeed, both Dench and McKellen have told me that playing rep taught them everything about acting.
Clark noted that the plays are “kind of like a tonic” to each other. “Look Back in Anger has this unforgiving aspect to it and there’s lots of times where there’s a lack of hope to the future in some ways, whereas Roots is incredibly forgiving and there’ s excitement for what could be.”
She told me that the plays show “the importance of what’s going on in every living room. Everybody’s conversations that they have with their families, or their friends or their partner are all just as vital as what anyone is saying on a bigger stage.”
The plays show “how vital it is to talk with each other, to feel and think and to know that what you think is of consequence and matters, and they both explore that in different ways,” Clark added.
She is also looking forward to treading the boards again. The last time I saw her was playing Cordelia when Glenda Jackson was Lear at the Old Vic.
She hailed Jackson as “just so inspiring and fiery and unapologetic.”
The thespian noted that when actors are filming “you are so protected” by the crew and creative team that “you have a lot of people helping you with your performance, whereas on stage once you’ve had the rehearsal you really are just there alone. It’s frightening but a good thing to do and it really exercises the acting muscles.”
Putting stage muscles to good use
Howle has been putting those stage muscles to good use of late.
He recently completed a run at the National Theatre in a revival of Dodie Smith’s Dear Octopus opposite Lyndsay Duncan and Bessie Carter.
The actor chatted to me from Jordan where he’s filming a project he was duty bound not to tell me anything about.
However, like Dench and McKellen, he’s “well in favor of bringing back rep” for the versatility it gives and also because it allows an actor to think about how to create two or more distinct characters. “Having different rehearsal processes is a great schooling.”
The plays, especially Look Back in Anger, he said, explores the “hopes and dreams for working class Britain finally coming to fruition but very quickly the cracks start to appear.”
All this is examined against a backdrop of rampant industrialisation in a country trying to find its feet again.
“Advertising becomes massive – the manipulation and mind control – and as ever, people get left behind,” Howle said.
Jimmy is highly educated but his working class background makes him suspicious of the shiny new prospects on offer.
“On paper there’s every reason for him to walk into a job and do well and succeed. But he doesn’t fit the mould or he doesn’t want to fit the mould …he’s a cog in a well-oiled capitalist machine, and he’s very cynical about that,” said the actor who starred in acclaimed BBC/Netflix drama The Serpent.
The rep company will rehearse both plays in July for eight weeks and Howle hopes to do other plays next year. Upcoming for Howle is Netflix drama The Perfect Couple and feature film Kid Snow that was shot in the Kalgoorlie region of Western Australia.
Ahead of the Angry and Young season, Garai, Deborah Findlay, Gina McKee, Anglican Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner will star in The Years. That production runs at the Almeida from July 27 through August 31.
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