FORGOTTEN VOICES to Host Commemorative Performance at Edinburgh Fringe, 4 August

Forgotten Voices, a play by Malcolm McKay based on the best-selling book Forgotten Voices of the Great War by Max Arthur, which is being staged at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is holding a special commemorative performance at 10.30pm on 4 August, which will end at midnight, to mark the exact centenary of the outbreak of WWI.

Guest artists Julian Sands and Robert Vaughn (who appear in the show until 6 August) will join core cast members Philip Fox, Geoff Leesley, Gerrard McArthur and Wendy Nottingham for the performance. The lights will then be gently lowered as part of the Lights Out commemorative initiative, which is taking place nationwide that evening, Pipers from the Royal Scots Association Band will play, and the chimes of midnight will be heard.

The audience will include 40 guests from Poppy Scotland, along with Max Arthur.

Historian and journalist Max Arthur's Forgotten Voices of the Great War was first published in 2002 to great acclaim. In 1972, a team of academics and archivists from the Imperial War Museum recorded interviews with veterans of the First World War from Britain, Germany, America, Australia and Canada. This archive provides a unique account of life during the Great War and the tapes contain the forgotten voices of a generation no longer with us. 30 years later, Max Arthur created a remarkable account of these first-hand stories.

Taken from the Imperial War Museum's oral testimonies of the veterans of World War One, Forgotten Voices is a series of vivid and deeply moving accounts of battle and its terrible aftermath. These accounts are recited by the actors, making a poignant tribute for the centenary commemoration of WWI.

Forgotten Voices is being perform at the Grand - Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe until 25 August daily at 1.30pm, excluding Tuesdays. Further guest artists appearing in the show after Julian Sands and Robert Vaughn, are Peter Bowles (6 - 13 August), Christopher Timothy (14 - 18 August), Robert Powell (14 and 15 August), James Fleet (20 - 25 August) and Celia Imrie (20 - 22 August).

The production is directed by Malcolm McKay, with original music by Nick Bicât and design by Douglas Heap.

Malcolm McKay's previous theatre plays have included Pistols (Hackney Empire) and Airbase (Arts Theatre). For television, his scripts include NCS Manhunt, the adaptation of Gormenghast, and the award-winning A Wanted Man trilogy. His directing credits include Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (Globe Theatre), the television films Cruel Train (which he adapted from the Zola novel), Traitors and Wedded, and the television plays Redemption and Maria's Child, for both of which he also wrote the screenplays.

Nick Bicât has written over 150 scores and soundtracks for film, television and theatre. Twice nominated for a BAFTA, his film and television scores include A Christmas Carol (George C Scott), The Scarlet Pimpernel (Antony Andrews/Sir Ian McKellen/Jane Seymour), Wetherby (by Sir David Hare), and The Reflecting Skin (by Philip Ridley), The Irish RM, Holding On and Births Marriages & Deaths. He has composed for the Royal Shakespeare Company (The Greeks) and the National Theatre (Plenty, Pravda, King Lear), written eleven musicals and an opera, The Knife, with Sir David Hare (best musical score, 1989 New York Drama Desk Awards).

Forgotten Voices is produced at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by Nick Brooke Limited and the Pleasance Theatre Trust.

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