Watch out for . . .
ADRIAN EDMONDSON, who will play Malvolio in Christopher Luscombe’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford from November 8.
Kara Tointon will play Olivia; while Dinita Gohil will play Viola and Esh Alladi her twin Sebastian.
Luscombe, who directed the RSC’s Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing, turning them into comic hits, has an ability to find the funny bone in almost any situation. He told me he has set his Twelfth Night in the 1890s, when Queen Victoria was in mourning. ‘Olivia’s in mourning, too; and I can see Kara all in black, looking magnificent,’ he sighed contentedly. Nicholas Bishop will be her Orsino.
Luscombe said he saw Tointon in a production of Gaslight and remembered her when he was casting Twelfth Night.
He added that there’s a sense of the British Raj in his piece, which informed his casting of Alladi, Gohil and Beruce Khan as Feste
the Fool. Luscombe said he once cast Edmondson as Brad in The Rocky Horror Show and knew the actor should do some classical work.
‘He’s got funny bones, that’s for sure!’ But he also felt he would be able to explore the darkness that resides in, and around, Malvolio. Luscombe has also cast Michael Cochrane as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, John Hodgkinson as Sir Toby Belch and Vivien Parry as Maria.
Rehearsals start on August 14, and the show will be broadcast in cinemas on Valentine’s Day next year.
nBERTiE CARVEl, as Rupert Murdoch, and Richard Coyle, as larry lamb, who capture the dizzying audacity of James graham’s play ink, about how they launched the modernday The Sun newspaper in the 1960s.
There are spot- on performances from the rest of the cast, too, including Sophie Stanton, Pearl Chanda and david Schofield. director Rupert goold adds a musical sensibility, aided by lynne Page’s choreography.
i saw ink just before attending a jolly reunion of journalists who worked on the london Evening Standard when it was published in Shoe lane just off Fleet Street.
i was amused to see several of my more learned former colleagues reciting ditties they once wrote (and sang) in the newsroom in the Seventies — long before i joined!
i’ll admit i’ve been known to croon a tune, now and again, in this office, so goold was right to add a Joan littlewood touch to ink.