THE FUNFAIR Launches HOME's New Space Tonight

Director Walter Meierjohann has announced the cast of the world premiere of The Funfair, the first HOME production in its brand new home at First Street in Manchester. An adaptation by Olivier Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens of Ödön von Horváth's classic 1932 play Kasimir and Karoline, the production features a cast of 13 actors and actor-musicians.

Wigan-born Ben Batt plays Cash, whose break-up with sweetheart Caroline opens the action. Ben has recently finished filming the BBC's new production of The Go-Between, alongside Vanessa Redgrave, Jim Broadbent, and Lesley Manville. He also starred in The Village, filmed nearby in Hayfield, Glossop, and Chapel-en-le-Frith, on BBC1, and has credits in Shameless, Scott & Bailey, and on the big screen in Captain America: The First Avenger. On stage, his notable credits include As You Like It at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, and Making Noise Quietly at the Donmar Warehouse in London.

Caroline is played by Katie Moore, who was a nominee for Best Supporting Actress at the recent Manchester Theatre Awards for her portrayal of Rita in Billy Liar at the Royal Exchange. She is well known to TV viewers as Susy in The Paradise (BBC1), Janice in Doc Martin (ITV), Marion in Call the Midwife (BBC1), and as Tanya in E4's popular science-fiction comedy-drama Misfits.

The character of Billy Smoke is played by Ian Bartholomew, who won a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for his portrayal of Mr Doolittle in Pygmalion at the Royal Exchange Theatre in 2010. He worked with Walter Meierjohann the previous year, taking the title role in the director's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at Liverpool Playhouse.

Christopher Wright, a stalwart of over 20 productions at the Library Theatre Company prior to it merging with Cornerhouse to form HOME, takes the role of Davy Spear; Salford University graduate Chris Jack is the funfair's Ringmaster; Manchester School of Theatre at Manchester Metropolitan University graduate Kate Dobson plays Maria; CiCi Howells, who appeared in the national tour of Saturday Night Fever as well as Graeae Theatre's tour of The Threepenny Opera, plays Juanita; and Sally Hodgkiss, who combines her acting career with work on the stand-up comedy circuit, plays Elli.

Victoria Gee, who has toured nationwide with leading director Max Stafford- Clark's Out of Joint Company, plays Esther; Welsh actor James Lusted, a regular on a number of dramas on S4C, takes on the role of the narrator and Tiny; fellow Welsh actor Rhodri Meilir, best known for the portrayal of Alfie Butts in BBC1's long-running sitcom My Family, plays Chase; Max Runham, who trained at Rose Bruford and appeared with CiCi Howells in Graeae's The Threepenny Opera, will be part of the Funfair band; Michael Ryan, who will appear in Joe Wright's forthcoming film Pan alongside Hugh Jackman, Kathy Burke, and Paul Kaye, about the early life of Peter Pan, plays Frankie Marr; and musician Barbara Hockaday, who has appeared on a number of occasions in recent years at Bolton Octagon, completes the cast.

The Funfair will be directed by HOME's Artistic Director: Theatre, Walter Meierjohann, whose widely acclaimed award-winning site-specific production of Romeo & Juliet, his first HOME production, was a complete sell-out in Manchester's historic Victoria Baths in September 2014.

The production reunites the team behind Romeo & Juliet - Director Walter Meierjohann, Dramaturg Petra-Jane Tauscher, Designer Ti Green, who scooped the Best Design award at the recent Manchester Theatre Awards, and Lighting Designer Mike Gunning. It also features video designs by Louis Price, who worked on Meierjohann's 2011 Liverpool Playhouse production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. The Musical Director for The Funfair is composer Dave Price, and Louis Hammond returns as Casting Director.

Complete with freak-show, live band, and a big dipper, The Funfair tells the dark and humorous story of Cash and Caroline, two young lovers, whose break-up is played out against the backdrop of economic and social hardship. Originally set one night during the Oktoberfest in 1929, Stephens' adaptation draws clear parallels between the political tensions of the period, around the time of the Wall Street Crash and its global implications, to today's social uncertainties, yet still finds plenty of dry humour in the bright lights of a busy funfair. And with a General Election, regarded as the most important and hard-to-predict in a generation, taking place a week before the play opens, The Funfair could not be timelier.

Kasimir and Karoline is also the inspiration for The heart is deceitful above all things, HOME's debut group exhibition (Fri 22 May - Sun 26 July). Curated by Sarah Perks, Artistic Director: Visual Art, and Omar Kholeif, Senior Visiting Curator at HOME, the show explores love, loss and heartbreak. It features six new remarkable commissions alongside significant existing works by 11 international artists including Jeremy Bailey, Declan Clarke, Douglas Coupland, Irina Gheorghe, Flaka Haliti, Ragnar Kjartansson, Basim Magdy, Gemma Parker, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Jessey Tsang and Wu-Tsang. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a specially curated film programme including UK premieres by artists Rosa Barba and Stanya Kahn.

HOME is located at 2 Tony Wilson Place, First Street, Manchester M15 4FN. PRESS NIGHT PERFORMANCE - Thursday 21 May 2015 19:30. The Funfair runs tonight 14 May - Saturday 13 June 2015. More information available at homemcr.org/production/the-funfair. Tickets: £15 - £29.50; preview (Thu 14 May) all tickets £10. Concessions, group bookings, and season tickets available. More information by calling the HOME box office at 0161 200 1500. Post-show Q&A with Malter Meierjohann set for Thu 4 June.

HOME, Manchester's new centre for international contemporary art, theatre, film and books will officially open its doors this Spring (celebratory weekend 21-25 May 2015). Designed by Dutch architects Mecanoo and featuring a 500-seat theatre; a 150-seat flexible theatre; a 500m2, 4m high gallery space; five cinema screens; digital production and broadcast facilities; a cafe? bar and restaurant, HOME was formed from the merger of two of Manchester's best-loved cultural organisations, Cornerhouse and the Library Theatre Company. Inheriting and building upon their artistic legacies, HOME is predicted to receive 500,000 visits per year, adding significantly to the revenue contributed by Manchester's cultural venues to the local and regional economy. It forms the cultural heart of the £500m First Street regeneration project off Whitworth Street West in Manchester City Centre, with the 20 acres development being brought forward by Ask Property Developments, Manchester City Council's development partner for the project. Manchester City Council has committed £19 million to fund the creation of HOME. The overall budget for the project is £25 million, with £5 million being met by Arts Council England Lottery funding and the remainder by fundraising. £250,000 has already been contributed by the Garfield Weston Foundation and £150,000 by The Granada Foundation. The patrons of HOME are Danny Boyle, National Theatre Artistic Director Nicholas Hytner, actress Suranne Jones, playwright and poet Jackie Kay MBE, artists Rosa Barba and Phil Collins, filmmaker Asif Kapadia and actress and author Meera Syal MBE. www.homemcr.org | @HOME_mcr

Walter Meierjohann was born in Amsterdam and grew up in Holland, America and Germany. He studied directing at the Ernst Busch School of Dramatic Art in Berlin, and St Hugh's College, Oxford. He has worked throughout Germany and Austria, where his productions include Heinrich von Kleist's The Broken Jug and Amphytrion, Schiller's Mary Stuart, Eugene O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey into Night, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman. In 2002 he was asked by Peter Stein to direct Thornton Wilder's A Long Christmas Dinner with Stein's Ensemble in Berlin, and in the same year, he was nominated for a festival award for his production of The Just by Albert Camus. In 2004 Walter was appointed Artistic Director of NEUBAU, the international New Writing line of the State Theatre of Dresden. In 2007 he joined the Young Vic Theatre in London as International Associate Director. His Young Vic production of Kafka's Monkey starring award-winning actress Kathryn Hunter toured to Australia, Japan, Paris, and New York. Other recent UK productions include In the Red and Brown Water (Young Vic, London), All My Sons (The Curve, Leicester), The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Liverpool Playhouse), Unleashed (The Barbican), and Romeo & Juliet (Victoria Baths for HOME). He was appointed Artistic Director of Theatre for HOME in 2013.

Simon Stephens was born in Stockport in 1971. He is an award-winning playwright whose work includes Bluebird (Royal Court, 1998); Herons (Royal Court, 2001); Port (Manchester Royal Exchange, 2002 - Pearson Award for Best New Play); Country Music (Royal Court, 2004); On The Shore Of The Wide World (Manchester Royal Exchange/National Theatre, 2005 - Olivier Award for Best New Play); Motortown (Royal Court, 2006); Harper Regan (National Theatre, 2008); Sea Wall (Bush Theatre/Traverse Theatre, 2008/09); Pornography (Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hanover, 2007 and Edinburgh Festival/Birmingham Rep, 2008 and Tricycle Theatre, 2009); Punk Rock (Lyric Hammersmith/Manchester Royal Exchange, 2009); The Trial of Ubu (Schauspielhaus, Essen/Toneelgroep Amsterdam, 2010 and Hampstead Theatre, 2012); A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, written in collaboration with David Eldridge and Robert Holman (Lyric Hammersmith, 2010); Marine Parade, a play with songs, written with Mark Eitzel (Brighton Festival, 2010); T5 (Traverse Theatre, 2010); Wastwater (Royal Court Theatre, 2011); an adaptation of Jon Fosse's I Am the Wind (Young Vic Theatre, 2011); Three Kingdoms (NO99 Theatre, Estonia/Munich Playhouse/Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 2012); Morning (Lyric Theatre/Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Festival, 2012); a new version of A Doll's House (Young Vic Theatre, 2012/13, Duke of York's Theatre 2013; an adaptation of Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Royal National Theatre, 2012; Apollo Theatre. 2013; Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Broadway, 2014 - Olivier Award for Best New Play); Blindsided (Manchester Royal Exchange, 2014); Carmen Disruption (Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, 2014) and Birdland (Royal Court, 2014). TV includes Cargese for Sprout Pictures (Sky Arts, 2013); an adaptation of Pornography for Coming Up (Channel 4, 2009) and Dive (Granada/BBC, 2009).

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