Casting Announced For THE SUGAR HOUSE at the Finborough Theatre

The cast has been announced for the European premiere and the UK debut of multi-award-winning Australian playwright Alana Valentine's, The Sugar House which opens at the Finborough Theatre for a four week limited season on Wednesday, 27 October 2021 (Press Nights: Thursday, 4 November 2021 and Friday, 5 November 2021 at 7.30pm).

Commissioned by The Finborough Theatre, the production will feature Lea Dube as Jenny and Prin, in her professional stage debut, Adam Fitzgerald (Macbeth - The Globe Players, The Crown - Netflix) as Ollie McCreadie and Zee, Jessica Zerlina Leafe (The Innocents - Netflix) as Narelle McCreadie, Fiona Skinner (The Sweet Science of Bruising - Southwark Playhouse and Wilton's Music Hall, The Full Monty - UK Tour) as Margo McCreadie, Patrick Toomey (The Remains Of The Day - Northampton Theatres and Out Of Joint, The Exorcist - UK Tour) as Sidney McCreadie and others, and Janine Ulfane (A Lesson From Aloes - Finborough Theatre, A Part of Me - Jermyn Street Theatre) as June McCreadie.

"You know the worst thing about pretending to be all polished and posh, people start to believe that's all you've ever been. They tear everything down in this city, tear it down, gussy it up. We paid for this city like everyone else, so why are we never listened to? Why are our memories and our sense of belonging so worthless in this city?"

Narelle is Sydney born and bred, but lately she's lost her sense of belonging.

The city changes all the time, places are torn down and with them go her certainties.

She finds herself drawn back to Pyrmont, formerly the working class industrial heartland of the city, but now newly gentrified as 19th century factories become shiny apartment blocks with million dollar views of Sydney Harbour. But it remains her family's bedrock, and the home of her extraordinary grandmother June.

As she keeps going over the forces that formed her - the last man hanged in Australia, the mistakes that changed lives, her mother's divorce, her grandfather's decline - she tries to make sense of what she, her city, and her country have become. And what has been lost along the way.

Focusing on three generations of remarkable women, The Sugar House is a deeply moving family drama that distils the conflict of how we are raised against what we choose, and how the hope of social transformation as we move forward to embrace the future sometimes means the irretrievable loss of what built us.

The Sugar House was a hit at Sydney's renowned Belvoir Street Theatre in 2018, where it was nominated for Best New Australian Work in the Sydney Theatre Awards. It now receives its first production outside Australia at the Finborough Theatre.

Playwright Alana Valentine is an Australian playwright and librettist, and makes her UK debut at the Finborough Theatre. Her award-winning work with First Nations Australians includes, with co-writer Ursula Yovich, the multi Helpmann-Award winning (Best Original Score, Best Musical) Barbara and the Camp Dogs, first seen at Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, in 2017 and on tour in Australia in 2019. It was also nominated for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award as Best Drama. In November 2019, a song cycle Flight Memory, written with composer Sandra France, premiered at Street Theatre, Canberra. As well as recent productions of original plays at the Seymour Centre for Performing Arts, Sydney - Made To Measure (a commission from the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, where Alana was Writer in Residence in 2018) and Ear to the Edge of Time (winner of the 5th International Playwriting Award), Alana's plays Parramatta Girls, Letters to Lindy and Head Full of Love have toured Australia. Her play The Ravens won the BBC/British Council International Radio Playwriting Competition in 2014 and was recently produced in the United States. Alana has also worked with First Nations artistic director Stephen Page and Bangarra Dance Theatre as dramaturg on Helpmann-Award winning Best New Australian work Bennelong as well as Patyegarang, Dark Emu and ID in Belong. Forthcoming productions include Notre Dame with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in August 2020 and Wayside Bride to be presented by Belvoir Street Theatre in 2021. Amongst many awards and residences, she won three Australian Writers Guild Awards in 2013 including the Major Award and the Inaugural David Williamson Award for Excellence in Writing for the Australian Theatre for Grounded, and has also held an International Writing Fellowship at London's Shakespeare's Globe Theatre . Her plays are published by Currency Press.

Producers A Million Freds Productions return to the Finborough Theatre after their sell out run of Athol Fugard's A Lesson From Aloes, directed by Dame Janet Suzman. The Company's work has previously been seen in London and internationally including productions in South Africa, Sweden and Ireland.

Book online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Box Office 020 7244 7439

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