Rodney Ackland's AFTER OCTOBER Rediscovered at Finborough Theatre

The first Central London production in eighty years of Rodney Ackland's After October opens at the Finborough Theatre for a limited four and a half week season on Tuesday, 22 November 2016.

Hampstead, 1936. In a shabby basement flat, aspiring playwright Clive Monkhams dreams of a West End hit and winning Francie's heart. His bankrupt mother Rhoda, a faded actress, frets about the bills and the fortunes of her penniless daughters while reminiscing about her glory days. Clive's family and an entourage of bohemian dependants all need him to make it big. With opening night approaching and finances fast running out, everything rides on the success of the play and, for Clive, the future looks all too glittering...

From the acclaimed writer of Absolute Hell and Before the Party, After October is Rodney Ackland's most autobiographical play, both a bittersweet homage to the theatre and a fascinating portrait of an impoverished family on the brink of a glamorous new life. This rediscovery marks the first Central London production since its premiere in 1936.

Playwright Rodney Ackland (1908-1991) was 21 when his first play Improper People was produced at the Arts Theatre Club in 1929. He became a leading West End playwright just three years laterwhen John Gielgud transferred Strange Orchestra to the West End. He went on to many other West End successes, but his work fell into virtual obscurity for three decades until The Dark River (1943) was revived at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, in 1984. The Spectator called it "perhaps the one indisputably great play of the past half-century in English." Other revivals followed, most notablyAbsolute Hell (1952) which ran to huge critical acclaim at the Orange Tree Theatre, the National Theatre and on BBC Television starring Judi Dench. His other plays include Smithereens (1934), The Old Ladies (1935), Before the Party (1949) and A Dead Secret (1957). His screenplays include Bank Holiday (1938), 49th Parallel (1941) for which he was nominated for an Oscar, Thursday's Child(1943) and The Queen of Spades (1949).

Director Oscar Toeman returns to the Finborough Theatre where he directed the sell-out production of J. B. Priestley's Laburnum Grove in 2013 and Hey Brother for Vibrant 2011 - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights; and was Resident Assistant Director where he assisted on Accolade andMirror Teeth. Trained at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, and through the Young Vic Directors Programme. Theatre includes Measure for Measure (North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford), Richard III(Stanwix Theatre, Cumbria), What They Took With Them (Moving Stories, United Nations Refugee Agency fundraiser at the National Theatre), Why I Want to Work at Tesco's (Bush Theatre), A.G.M(Nabokov at Soho Theatre), The Ballad of the Copper Revolution (Nabokov at The Old Vic Tunnels) and The Stanhope Sisters (The Red Hedgehog and The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath). Associate and Assistant Direction includes Waste, directed by Roger Michell (National Theatre), The Merchant of Venice, directed by Polly Findlay (Royal Shakespeare Company), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, directed by Adrian Noble (Theatre Royal Bath), Twelfth Night, directed by Tim Carroll (Shakespeare's Globe and Apollo Theatre), Uncle Vanya, directed by Lucy Bailey (The Print Room) and Skane, directed by Tim Carroll (Hampstead Theatre). He was long listed for the JMK Award in 2014 and 2015, a National Theatre Staff Director in 2015, and Interim Resident Director at the National Theatre Studio in 2016.

Producer Troupe is supported by the Stage One Bursary Scheme for New Producers and returns to the Finborough Theatre after its critically acclaimed rediscoveries of Robert Bolt's Flowering Cherrywith Benjamin Whitrow in 2015 and R. C. Sherriff's The White Carnation with Aden Gillett in 2013, which later transferred to the Jermyn Street Theatre, starring Michael Praed.

Box Office 0844 847 1652

Book online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

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