Lee Evans, Jonjo O'Neill And Meera Syal Join 'Pinter At The Pinter'

In what promises to be an exciting event within the Pinter at the Pinter season, Lee Evans will appear in an eclectic mixed bill alongside stage and screen favourite Meera Syal. They join the previously announced Keith Allen and Tamsin Greig from 25th October to 8th December, for 23 performances only. Book tickets here!

Evans will perform the poignantly witty Monologue and a selection of Pinter's most hilarious comedy sketches. Evans and Syal will perform, amongst other pieces, the sketch Apart >From That, whilst Syal also joins Allen and Greig in A Kind of Alaska. The play, performed alongside Landscape, movingly captures the oneiric nature of memory.

A multi-award-winning actor and comedian, Evans last performed Pinter's work in 2007 when he starred in The Dumb Waiter at Trafalgar Studios.

Lee Evans said: "Working with Harold Pinter was one of the most incredibly exciting experiences of my life. Of course, I found Harold to be, along with his incredible wife Antonia, two of the most generous, kind and considerate people one could ever wish to meet; a couple so desperately keen to pass on anything they could to encourage and help young actors and directors, no matter who, what or where you might be from. It didn't matter to Harold - the most important thing to him was the work. Most of all, Harold loved it when his work allowed you, the performer, to shine. Thanks, Harold - my hero."

Landscape is a minimalist marvel: a woman is locked in a beautiful memory and her husband demands to be heard. In A Kind of Alaska, Deborah awakes from a twenty-nine-year sleep and is suspended between the conscious and unconscious worlds. In Monologue, a loner addresses an absent friend who disappeared many years ago.

Clarence Derwent Award-winner Jonjo O'Neill (The Prudes, Unreachable) joins Paapa Essiedu, Kate O'Flynn, Sir Antony Sher and Maggie Steed in the explosive opening of the season, which features plays including One For The Road and Ashes to Ashes. O'Neill will appear in Mountain Language and The New World Order, as well as the first major revival of the sketch Press Conference, originally performed by Harold Pinter himself, and the World Premiere of The Pres and an Officer. The evening plays for 23 performances only from September 6th.

Marking the 10th anniversary of the revered playwright's death, Pinter at the Pinter features all Pinter's short plays, alongside a selection of his poems and sketches.

The season is presented by The Jamie Lloyd Company, ATG Productions, Ben Lowy Productions, Gavin Kalin Productions and Glass Half Full Productions.

Pinter at the Pinter is an unparalleled event featuring the short plays written by the greatest British playwright of the 20th Century, in the theatre that bears his name. They have never been performed together in a season of this kind. Each play runs for a limited number of performances.

The season will be presented in repertoire by a world-class cast, many of whom were Harold Pinter's friends and frequent collaborators. The cast includes Keith Allen, Jessica Barden, Ron Cook, Phil Davies, Danny Dyer, Paapa Essiedu, Lee Evans, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves, Tamsin Greig, Jane Horrocks, Celia Imrie, John MacMillan, Emma Naomi, Tracy Ann Oberman, Kate O'Flynn, Jonjo O'Neill, Abraham Popoola, Sir Antony Sher, John Simm, Hayley Squires, Maggie Steed, David Suchet, Meera Syal, Luke Thallon, Russell Tovey, Penelope Wilton and Nicholas Woodeson.

Mark Rylance will make two special charity performances of Art, Truth and Politics, Pinter's Nobel Prize Lecture, in aid of the Stop the War Coalition.

Direction is by Jamie Lloyd, Patrick Marber, Lyndsey Turner, Ed Stambollouian and Lia Williams, with season design by Soutra Gilmour, lighting by Jon Clark, Elliot Griggs and Richard Howell, and sound and music by George Dennis and Ben & Max Ringham.

The season is presented by The Jamie Lloyd Company, ATG Productions, Benjamin Lowy Productions, Gavin Kalin Productions and Glass Half Full Productions.

Pinter at the Pinter is part of the Pinter 10 partnership with the BFI, The Harold Pinter Estate and Faber & Faber, which is marking the 10th anniversary of Pinter's death with a series of events celebrating the life of the most important British playwright of the 20th Century.

BFI Southbank will commemorate the anniversary with a season of Pinter's film and television productions; Pinter on Screen: Power, Sex & Politics will take place at BFI Southbank until the end of August. Further details can be found at www.whatson.bfi.org.uk.

Harold Pinter was born in Hackney, London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 until his death on Christmas Eve 2008.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pinter was lauded throughout his life as one of the greatest living playwrights, who had a revolutionary impact on how theatre was written and performed, and who it represented on stage. An establishment agitator who challenged injustice, he became as famous for his political interventions as for his writing later in his life.

His genius was recognised within his lifetime as a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, the Companion of Honour for services to Literature, the Legion D'Honneur, the European Theatre Prize, the Laurence Olivier Award and the Moliere D'Honneur for lifetime achievement. In 1999 he was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature, in addition to 18 other honorary degrees.

After working as an actor under the stage name David Baron, Pinter went on to be a theatrical playwright, director, screenwriter and actor.

He wrote his first play The Room in 1957 and from there 29 plays, including The Birthday Party, The Hothouse, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, Old Times, No Man's Land, and Betrayal. Sketches include The Black and White, Request Stop, That's your Trouble, Night, and Precisely.

Pinter directed 27 theatre productions, including James Joyce's Exiles, David Mamet's Oleanna, seven plays by Simon Gray and scores of his own plays including his last, Celebration, paired with his first, The Room, at The Almeida Theatre, London in the spring of 2000.

In film he wrote 21 screenplays including The Pumpkin Eater, The Servant, The Go-Between, The French Lieutenant's Woman and Sleuth.

He continued to act under his own name, on stage and screen. He last acted two years before his death in 2006, when he appeared in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at The Royal Court Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson.

To post a comment, you must register and login.