Casting Announced For European Premiere of Arthur Miller's FINISHING THE PICTURE

Following his critically acclaimed, up-close reinvention of Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy and sell-out revival of The American Clock, multi-award-winning director Phil Willmott brings the intense focus of the intimate Finborough Theatre to bear on Miller's final work, Finishing The Picture, opening for a four week limited season on Tuesday, 12 June 2018 (Press Nights: Thursday, 14 June 2018 and Friday, 15 June 2018 at 7.30pm.)

As the women of today's Hollywood campaign for dignity and equality, Finishing the Picture is a razor sharp psychological study of an abused, misunderstood female star and the havoc her unpredictability brings to a film set in 1961.

Inspired by the filming of The Misfits, the screenplay Miller wrote for his then wife, Marilyn Monroe, and focused on the bemused and exasperated director, screen writer, producer, acting coaches and crew that closely mirror the real life production team of The Misfits - and whilst leading lady Kitty shares many characteristics with Monroe herself,

Finishing the Picture - Arthur Miller's very final play - is a devastating indictment of how a male-dominated movie industry inadvertently destroyed a vulnerable young woman, even as they transformed her into a screen goddess, and how they were unable to deal with the wreckage they caused.

This UK premiere is only the play's second production anywhere in the world, following its original large-scale premiere at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in 2004, shortly before the playwright's death.

Playwright Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was inarguably one of the greatest American dramatists of the twentieth century with a career that spanned over seven decades. His plays include The Man Who Had All The Luck (1940), All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge (1955), A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1964), Incident at Vichy (1964), recently presented at the Finborough Theatre also directed by Phil Wilmott, The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977), The American Clock (1980), also recently presented at the Finborough Theatre also directed by Phil Wilmott, Playing for Time (1980), The Last Yankee (1991), The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991), Broken Glass (1994), Mr Peter's Connections (1998), Resurrection Blues (2002) and Finishing the Picture (2004).

Director Phil Willmott is a multi-award winning director, artistic director, playwright, composer, librettist, teacher, dramaturg, arts journalist and performer. He trained as an actor at Rose Bruford in the 1980s and was made a fellow of the college in 2012. Alongside his innovative reinterpretations of the classics, musical theatre revivals and new musical development his notable productions of contemporary and recent drama include F**cking Men (Finborough Theatre, Kings Head Theatre and West End), Liza, Liza, Liza (UK tour for Bill Kenwright), Billy Liar, Athol Fugard's Master Harold... and the Boys (Liverpool Playhouse), Angels in America and Kiss of the Spider Woman (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield), The American Clock, The Notebook of Trigorin, Country Magic, Crime and Punishment, The Lower Depths, The Grapes of Wrath, Trelawny of the Wells and Loyalties (Finborough Theatre), Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, Three Sisters in a version by Tracy Letts, Heartbreak House and The Cherry Orchard (Union Theatre) and Encounter, a new gay love story inspired by Brief Encounter (Above the Stag Theatre). As a writer, many of his plays, musicals and adaptations have been published and are regularly produced around the world. The adaptation of Lysistrata he wrote with Germaine Greer was presented as part of the Almeida's Greek Season starring Tamsin Grieg, and his adaptation of Gorki's The Lower Depths is published by Oberon Books.

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