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Troupe in association with Park Theatre presents
A Single Man
WRITER | CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
ADAPTER | SIMON READE
DIRECTOR | PHILIP WILSON
SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER | CAITLIN ABBOTT
LIGHTING DESIGNER | PETER HARRISON
SOUND DESIGNER AND COMPOSER | BETH DUKE
MOVEMENT DIRECTOR | NATASHA HARRISON
PRODUCER | ASHLEY COOK FOR TROUPE
Christopher Isherwood | Writer
Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was among the most celebrated writers of his generation. He left Cambridge without graduating, worked as a tutor and a secretary, briefly studied medicine and then published his first novels, All the Conspirators and The Memorial.
Between 1929 and 1939, he lived mainly abroad, including four years in Berlin, which inspired his novels Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin, on which the musical Cabaret is based. He also wrote four plays and a travel book with the poet W.H. Auden. In 1939, Isherwood moved to America, where he settled in Hollywood, became a Hindu and wrote for the film studios. He took U.S. citizenship in 1946.
In America, he wrote five more novels, including Prater Violet, Down There on a Visit and A Single Man, and kept prodigious diaries. He collaborated with his spiritual teacher Swami Prabhavananda on a translation of the Bhagavad Gita and produced another travel book and a biography of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. In the late 1960s, he turned to autobiography; in Kathleen and Frank, Christopher and His Kind and My Guru and His Disciple, Isherwood openly articulated the gay identity he had only implied in his fiction. Among his last work is October, one month of his diary with drawings by his partner from 1953 onward, American painter Don Bachardy.
Simon Reade | Adapter
Theatre credits include: Private Peaceful (Garrick Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, Hamburg Kammerspiele, 59E59 Theaters, TBG Theater, National Tour); David Copperfield (Barn Theatre); An Elephant in the Garden (Poonamallee Productions); A Pure Woman (Dorchester Arts); Sherlock Holmes: The Final Curtain, A Room With A View, Moon Tiger (Theatre Royal Bath and National Tours); Bliss/Mutluluk (Arcola Theatre); The Scarecrow and His Servant (Southwark Playhouse); Not the End of the World, The Mozart Question, Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp and The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark (Bristol Old Vic); Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which won a TMA Award (Bristol Old Vic, Polka Theatre); Epitaph for the Official Secrets Act (Royal Shakespeare Company) and Tales from Ovid (Royal Shakespeare Company, Young Vic).
Film and television credits include: Journey's End, Private Peaceful and What You Will.
Book credits include: Dear Mr. Shakespeare: Letters to a Jobbing Playwright and Cheek by Jowl.
Simon was previously Literary Manager at the Gate Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Artistic Director at Bristol Old Vic, Producer at Theatre Royal Bath Productions and Filter Theatre and Development Producer at BBC Television, Tiger Aspect Productions and Stolen Picture.
Philip Wilson | Director
Theatre credits include: Starcrossed (Wilton’s Music Hall); The Boy with the Bee Jar (Hope Theatre); Perfect Nonsense and After the Dance (Theatre by the Lake, Keswick); The Star, The Norman Conquests, Noises Off, Doctor Faustus, The Astonished Heart and Still Life (Liverpool Playhouse); As You Like It (Storyhouse); Beacons (Park Theatre); his own adaptations of Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales (Oxo Tower Bargehouse, Shoreditch Town Hall); The Three Lions (St. James Theatre, National Tour); How Many Miles to Babylon? (Lyric Theatre, Belfast); Twist of Gold (Polka Theatre); Sixty-Six Books (Bush Theatre, Westminster Abbey); The Importance of Being Earnest, Travesties (Birmingham Rep).
He was Artistic Director of Salisbury Playhouse from 2007-2011 where he directed The Game of Love and Chance, The Constant Wife, The Picture, Private Lives, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Winslow Boy, his own adaptation of J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country, What the Butler Saw, People at Sea, Alphabetical Order and Corpse!. He also directed and designed Blackbird, Faith Healer and Toro! Toro! which was nominated for a TMA Award.
Writing credits include: Dramatic Adventures in Rhetoric, with Giles Taylor, and Grimm Tales.
Philip was a performance consultant on the film Shakespeare in Love.
Caitlin Abbott | Set and Costume Designer
Caitlin trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Theatre credits include: Crimes on Centre Court (Theatre Royal Bath); Sweeney Todd, Hamelin, Chaos, Zero for the Young Dudes!, Basset, Changing Room and Arabian Nights (The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath); Autumn Opera Scenes (Guildhall School of Music and Drama); Perspective (National Theatre); Valentina Star Dreamer (Haste Theatre, The Place); Time and Tide (Park Theatre, Norwich Theatre Royal); The Mullah of Downing Street (Chipping Norton Theatre, Warwick Arts Centre) and The Elephant Man (Bristol Old Vic).
Film includes The Last Union for which she was nominated for Filmapalooza Award for Best Costume.
Work as an Assistant Designer includes: Pride and Prejudice* (sort of) (Criterion Theatre), West Side Story Symphonic Dances (Phoenix Dance Theatre and Opera North) and The Windsors: Endgame (Prince of Wales Theatre).
She was previously Assistant Designer at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Peter Harrison | Lighting Designer
Peter trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Productions for Troupe include: The Sweet Science of Bruising (Wilton’s Music Hall); Rasheeda Speaking (Trafalgar Studios); Dear Brutus and The Cardinal (Southwark Playhouse); Flowering Cherry (Finborough Theatre) and The White Carnation (Finborough Theatre, Jermyn Street Theatre).
Theatre includes: The Smeds and the Smoos and Wilde Creatures (Tall Stories); The Bloody Chamber and Macbeth (Proteus Theatre Company); Pink Mist (Bristol Old Vic and Bush Theatre); Candide, Carousel and Nell Gwynn (Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts); Macbeth (Stafford Festival Shakespeare, Stafford Castle); Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar (Guildford Shakespeare Company) and many pantomimes for First Family and Evolution Productions.
Opera credits include: Opera Works (English National Opera), Paul Bunyan (Welsh National Youth Opera) and Orpheus in the Underworld (Royal College of Music). Dance includes In-Nocentes and Home Turf (Sadler’s Wells) and productions for INTOTO Dance, Ballet Central, Michael Popper and Urdang Academy.
Work as Associate Lighting Designer includes: Betrayal (Harold Pinter Theatre, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre), The Man in the White Suit (Wyndham’s Theatre), As You Like It and Collaborators (National Theatre), I Can’t Sing! (London Palladium) and The Commitments (Palace Theatre).
Beth Duke | Sound Designer and Composer
Beth trained at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Theatre credits include: Mad House (Ambassadors Theatre); Alice in Wonderland (Mercury Theatre); Bridgerton (Secret Cinema); Robin Hood (Bristol Old Vic); Death Drop (Garrick Theatre, Criterion Theatre, National Tour); J’Ouvert (Harold Pinter Theatre); One Jewish Boy (Trafalgar Studios and National Tour); Typical Girls (Crucible Theatre); Scenes with Girls and Living Newspaper (Royal Court); Isla (Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Tuck Shop West End (Garrick Theatre); Patricia Gets Ready (For a Date With the Man Who Used to Hit Her) (Pleasance Edinburgh); Instructions for a Teenage Armageddon (Old Red Lion Theatre), Together, Not the Same (Sadler’s Wells), Great Expectations (Geffrye Museum); The State of Things (Brockley Jack Studio Theatre).
Work as an Associate Sound Designer includes: Manor (National Theatre); The Gunpowder Plot (Tower Vaults); The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience (56 Leadenhall Street); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Tobacco Factory); Apollo 13: The Dark Side of the Moon (Original Theatre Company) and Dust (New York Theatre Workshop).
Beth was previously Resident Sound Designer at the Almeida Theatre. She was nominated for the Evening Standard Future Theatre Fund with TikTok Award for Best Audio Design.
Natasha Harrison | Movement Director
Natasha trained at Northern School of Contemporary Dance and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Productions for Troupe include: The Sweet Science of Bruising (Wilton’s Music Hall) and Dear Brutus and The Cardinal (Southwark Playhouse).
Theatre credits include: Ride (Charing Cross Theatre); Girl from the North Country (UK and Ireland Tour); Whodunnit Unrehearsed 2, La Cage aux Folles, Building the Wall (Park Theatre); The Bolds (Unicorn Theatre); A Game of Love and Chance and Hunger (Arcola Theatre); Rocky Road (Jermyn Street Theatre); One Jewish Boy (Trafalgar Studios and National Tour); Macbeth (Royal Exchange Theatre); This Land R&D (Theatre Royal Plymouth); Mold Riots (Clwyd Theatr Cymru); A Christmas Carol (Derby Theatre); Tumulus (Soho Theatre); Handbagged (Salisbury Playhouse, Oldham Coliseum Theatre, York Theatre Royal); Not Such Quiet Girls (Opera North and Leeds Playhouse); Moll Flanders (Mercury Theatre); Shakespeare Nation and Julius Caesar (Royal Shakespeare Company).
Opera credits include: The Rake’s Progress (British Youth Opera) and The Lighthouse, The Locked Room, Les Mamelles de Tirésias and Une Éducation Manquée (Royal College of Music).
Natasha is a Royal Shakespeare Company Education Associate Practitioner and visiting lecturer to the Leeds Beckett University and the Royal College of Music. She was selected as Movement Director for The Old Vic 12 2018/19.
Ashley Cook for Troupe | Producer
Troupe’s latest production was The Sweet Science of Bruising by Joy Wilkinson at Southwark Playhouse, which transferred to Wilton’s Music Hall, and was nominated for an Off West End Award for Best New Play. Other recent work includes Rasheeda Speaking by Joel Drake Johnson at Trafalgar Studios, which starred Tanya Moodie, Elizabeth Berrington, Sheila Reid and Bo Poraj and was nominated for five Off West End Awards, including Best Production.
Other productions at Southwark Playhouse include the centenary year revival of Dear Brutus by J. M. Barrie and The Cardinal by James Shirley, which starred Stephen Boxer and Natalie Simpson for which she won the Ian Charleson Award. It was supported by an inaugural MGCfutures Bursary Award. Troupe’s previous rediscoveries at the Finborough Theatre – Rodney Ackland’s After October, Robert Bolt’s Flowering Cherry and R. C. Sherriff’s The White Carnation, which transferred to Jermyn Street Theatre – have been nominated for a total of five Off West End Awards.