Current Events: A Preview of the 2009 Fall London Season

By Robert Simonson
September 22, 2009

As is their wont, British playwrights will be tackling the Here and Now this fall. Two of the most important new openings of the season are about the ongoing worldwide financial crisis and its roots.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows his past work that David Hare is the author of one of these works. The full title of the drama is The Power of Yes: A dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis. Angus Jackson will direct, beginning Oct. 6 at the National Theatre's Lyttleton. The political subject is a very Hare-like idea for a play, but it apparently wasn't his idea at all. The National Theatre asked Hare to write on the colossal subject. Knowing nothing about money and how it's made, Hare dove in, meeting with many of the key players from the financial world. The end result is described as "not so much a play as a jaw-dropping account of how, as the banks went bust, capitalism was replaced by a socialism that bailed out the rich alone."

An equally anticipated play on a similar theme, Lucy Prebble's Enron, will be staged at the Royal Court, opening Sept. 22. Prebble thinks she knows why the world economy crashed last fall — because the globe chose to ignore an enormous canary in the coal mine called Enron, which tweeted loudly and long a decade earlier. Enron, of course, was the huge Texas energy firm whose debt-laden structure and cooked books led to disastrous collapse and one of the biggest financial scandals in history, ruining the lives and finances of thousands.

Hot director Rupert Goold (the Patrick Stewart Macbeth) piloted the ambitious, three-hour piece in Chichester and will bring it to the West End and Broadway after it plays out its sold-out run at the Court. Samuel West is Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling (now serving jail time), Tom Goodman-Hill is financial director Andrew Fastow (also in prison), and Tim Pigott-Smith is head Enron man Ken Lay (who died before he could be sentenced).

	Alan Bennett
	photo by Aubrey Reuben

Before his The History Boys took the West End and Broadway by storm, Alan Bennett was already a respected playwright. But in light of that worldwide smash, a new Bennett play now qualifies as a genuine event. The latest from the peculiarly English wit with the seemingly borderless appeal is The Habit of Art, which will begin at the National's Lyttelton Theatre Nov. 5. Michael Gambon, Alex Jennings and Frances de la Tour will star in the quirky tale of an imagined meeting between opera composer Benjamin Britten and poet W.H. Auden, who were collaborators and friends in their younger years. (Hey, if a play about the English school system can be a hit, so can one starring those guys.) While Britten and Auden try to catch up on a 25-year break in their relationship, they are observed and interrupted by, among others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station.

The play purports to "look at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion's spent: ultimately, on the habit of art." Only the fusty, domestic Bennett could call art a "habit" and render the concept intellectually intriguing.

	Mother Courage star Fiona Shaw

Actress Fiona Shaw and director Deborah Warner have made a habit of creating art with one another. The two have previously collaborated at the National Theatre on Beckett's Happy Days, Richard II, The Good Person of Sichuan and The Powerbook. Now they're back with Mother Courage, which will begin at the Olivier Theatre on Sept. 25.

Two major West End premieres take existing American artworks as their inspiration. The play Shawshank Redemption is adapted from a novel of Stephen King, which is best known to the public by the 1994 film starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. Bringing the tale of two prisoners serving life sentences who find inventive ways to be useful to the prison authorities to the stage are Owen O'Neill and Dave Johns. Peter Sheridan directs two American actors well known to New York theatregoers: Reg E. Cathey and Kevin Anderson. Performances are already underway at the Wyndhams.

	Breakfast as Tiffany's star Anna Friel
	photo by Uli Weber

American theatregoers may remember Truman Capote's novella Breakfast as Tiffany's as being the basis for an infamous flop musical so troubled that producer David Merrick closed it in previews in the early 1960s, never allowing it to open on Broadway. The new stage adaptation by Samuel Adamson is a straight play, directed by Sean Mathias. It begins Sept. 29. Playing the iconic role of Holly Golightly, which Capote envisioned as being played by Marilyn Monroe on screen but was created by Audrey Hepburn, is Anna Friel, most famous for her highly sexual performance in Closer. Joseph Cross is her friend and the narrator of her story, William "Fred" Parsons.

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, a dark comedy by Jim Cartwright, was a sizable hit in London back in the early '90s. Still, it's surprising to see it headed back to the West End so soon; it plays the Vaudeville Theatre this fall, beginning Oct. 8. But producers apparently have great hopes for Diana Vickers, a star of the 2008 edition of the popular "X-Factor" reality show. She will play the title character, a sheltered teen who has an uncanny ability to mimic the voices of famous singers from Garland to Bassey. Co-starring are Leslie Sharp and Marc Warren.

Jane Horrocks originated the role of Little Voice in 1992. If you want to know what she's up to now, you'll have to check out the new revival of the Irving Berlin musical Annie Get Your Gun at the Young Vic. She's Annie Oakley herself, beginning Oct. 16. Richard Jones directs. Reports have Jones seeking permission from those who control the Irving Berlin estate to change the book to update it for the new century. One idea: to set it in the year it was written, 1946.

Another American classic is taking over the stage at the Old Vic. Trevor Nunn directs Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's perennial about the Scopes "Monkey Trial," Inherit the Wind, which officially opens Oct. 1. Kevin Spacey plays Henry Drummond to David Troughton's Matthew Harrison.

Finally, An Inspector Calls returns to the West End Sept. 22 at the Novello. Nicholas Woodeson stars in Stephen Daldry's now iconic production of J.B. Priestley's mystery.