WATCH OUT FOR
DANNY SAPANI, pictured right, who stars in Lorraine Hansberry’s play Les Blancs, as a man who, after living in Europe, returns to his African homeland to find there are tensions between colonial settlers and Africans. Hansberry began writing the play in 1960, but it was unfinished at the time of her death in 1965. Robert Nemiroff, her former husband and literary executor, finished the drama and it was staged in the U.S. in 1970 with James Earl Jones. Director Yael Farber’s production at the National Theatre will run on the Olivier stage from March 22, with a company including Sian Phillips, Gary Beadle, Fola Akintola, Elliot Cowan, James Fleet, Clive Francis, Tunji Kasim, Anna Madeley, Xhanti Mbonzongwana, Anna-Maria
KATIE MITCHELL, who will direct Michelle Terry, Peter Hobday, graham Butler, natalie Klamar, Tom Mothersdale and Matthew Tennyson in Sarah Kane’s searing, violent play Cleansed, which will run at the national’s Dorfman Theatre from February 16.
ANNETTE McLAUGHLIN, pictured left, Martin Walsh and Scott Garnham, who will lead the touring production of the hit musical Billy Elliot, which kicks off at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, on February 24. The West End production of Billy Elliot will close at the Victoria Palace in April after an 11-year run.
JAMES GRAHAM, the ardent political playwright who has written a play about Screaming lord Sutch, called Monster raving loony, which Simon Stokes will direct at the Theatre royal, Plymouth from February 6. Sutch, who died in 1999, was leader of the Official Monster raving loony Party and stood for Parliament on 39 occasions, losing every time.