LES BLANCS, Starring PENNY DREADFUL's Danny Sapani, Heads to the National This Spring

Casting is set for Lorraine Hansberry's LES BLANCS at the National Theatre this spring! The Daily Mail reports that PENNY DREADFUL's Danny Sapani will lead the company. Performances begin March 22, 2016 on the Olivier stage. Yael Farber directs.

Appearing alongside Sapani will be Sian Phillips, Gary Beadle, Fola Akintola, Elliot Cowan, James Fleet, Clive Francis, Tunji Kasim, Anna Madeley, Xhanti Mbonzongwana, Anna-Maria Nabirye, Jean Nsengiyumva, Tumo Reetsang and Karren Winchester.

Hansberry's final work, LES BLANCS was unfinished at the time of her death in 1965 and was completed by her former husband Robert Nemiroff before taking the New York stage in 1970, starring the legendary James Earl Jones.

The National's official description of LES BLANCS reads: "An African country teeters on the edge of civil war. A society prepares to drive out its colonial present and claim an independent future. Racial tensions boil over. Tshembe, returned home from England for his father's funeral, finds himself in the eye of the storm. A family and a nation fall apart under the pressure to determine their own identity as this brave, illuminating and powerful play confronts the hope and tragedy of revolution. Written eleven years after A RAISIN IN THE SUN, Lorraine Hansberry's final drama is an unknown masterpiece of the American stage and a highly theatrical search for the soul of post-colonial Africa."

Sapani stars as 'Sembene' in Showtime's series PENNY DREADFUL and in THE BASTARD EXECUTIONER. Among his stage credits are August Wilson's JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE and RADIO GOLF, Errol John's MOON ON A RAINBOW SHAWL, and Euripides' MEDEA at the National. The actor appeared in Danny Boyle's film TRANCE and has also starred on the big screen in SINGAM 2.

Photo Credit: Franklyn Rodgers

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