FARRAGUT NORTH, OUR AJAX and More Set for Southwark Playhouse's Fall 2013 Season

Southwark Playhouse announces its Autumn 2013 season, including: the UK Premiere of Beau Willimon's Farragut North; the first major revival in over 30 years of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Love Girl and the Innocent; and the world premiere of Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Ajax. Details below!

FARRAGUT NORTH
by Beau Willimon. Directed by Guy Unsworth.
Previews from 11 September 2013. Press night Friday, 13 September 2013 at 8pm.
11 September to 5 October 2013

Stephen Bellamy is a bright young man with a ruthless political ambition. At twenty-five, he is already press secretary to a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. He is self-confident, charismatic and strategically brilliant; a player on a meteoric rise to the top. But when Stephen receives an unexpected phone call at a crucial period in the campaign, a decision made in the heat of the moment unleashes a chain of events even he can't control.

Farragut North is an extraordinary journey into the underworld of politics from Beau Willimon, head writer of the hit US version of House of Cards. It was adapted into The Ides of March, an Oscar and BAFTA-nominated screenplay written by Beau Willimon and George Clooney and directed by George Clooney. This year, Farragut North comes to Southwark Playhouse for its UK Premiere, directed by Guy Unsworth and produced by Peter Huntley Productions.

Casting and further creative details are to be announced.

THE LOVE GIRL AND THE INNOCENT
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Directed by Matthew Dunster.
Designed by Anna Fleischle.
Previews from 9 October 2013. Press night Tuesday, 15 October 2013 at 8pm
9 October to 2 November 2013.

Nemov is a new arrival at the camp, sent straight from the army front line to take charge of the prisoners. Confronted with the systems hypocrisy, he is pushed to the limits. How long can he endure the barbarity and injustice of the camp; a system that thrives on power, corruption, and sexual amorality?

When Nemov meets Lyuba, one of the women prisoners - a "love girl", he is tempTed Further, and forced to confront himself and how far he must betray his own moral and emotional loyalties.

Written by Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Love Girl and the Innocent is a gripping story about the struggle between sex, humanity and survival.

Casting and further creative details are to be announced.

OUR AJAX
by Timberlake Wertenbaker. Directed by David Mercatali.
Previews from 6 November 2013. Press night Friday, 8 November 2013 at 8pm.
6 November to 30 November 2013.

An epic drama of heroism, love and homeland, Sophocles's Ajax is brought urgently to life in this thrilling new play by Olivier Award-winner Timberlake Wertenbaker. Torn between army politics and the love of his soldiers on the front line of war, the legendary leader begins to spiral out of control.

Developed from interviews with current and former servicemen and women, this incisive and powerful new work comes to Southwark Playhouse directly following the smash hit West End revival of Wertenbaker's multi-award-winning modern classic Our Country's Good.

Produced by Natural Perspective (Britannicus, Wilton's Music Hall) and Supporting Wall, who return to Southwark Playhouse for the first time since their nationally-acclaimed sell-out production of Tender Napalm (also directed by Evening Standard Award nominee and Southwark Playhouse Associate Director David Mercatali).

Casting and further creative details are to be announced.

FARRAGUT NORTH: Playwright Beau Willimon is currently executive producer and show-runner of Netflix's original seriesHouse of Cards starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. His play Farragut North, became the basis for the motion picture screenplay The Ides of March, which he co-wrote with George Clooney and Grant Heslov.The Ides of March earned Willimon an Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, and it won The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Award for Best Screenplay. Other plays include Lower Ninth, which premiered at the Flea Theater in New York and was produced in London as part of the Donmar Trafalgar season in 2010, and Spirit Control, which premiered in November 2010 at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York.

Willimon was a recipient of the Lila Acheson Wallace-Juilliard Playwriting Fellowship and won the Seymour Brick Memorial Playwriting Prize. He was named 2008 Playwright-in-Residence at the Donmar Warehouse and he is a two-time winner of the Lincoln Center Le Comte du Nouy Award.

Recently he co-founded WestwaRD Productions, a film and television Production Company, with Jordan Tappis. Forthcoming projects include Wally and Andre Shoot Ibsen, a film adaptation of Ibsen's play Master Builder, developed by Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory and directed by Jonathan Demme. Westward is also developing two documentaries: Odyssey, about adventure traveller Karl Bushby's quest to circumnavigate the globe on foot, and Westerly, about Westerly Windina, a transgender Australian woman formerly known as legendary pro-surfer Peter Drouyn.

Director Guy Unsworth is currently Associate Director for Spamalot (Playhouse, West End) and Travels With My Aunt (Menier Chocolate Factory). Directing includes Marguerite (Tabard), Fresher - the Musical(Pleasance, Islington and Edinburgh), The Ghost Train (Lost), Play-in-a-Day series (London Bridge Tunnels), Up2D8 (Edinburgh Fringe), Someone Who'll Watch Over Me (Cockpit), Proof (Director's Guild Award for Best New Director).

THE LOVE GIRL AND THE INNOCENT: Playwright Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer who was imprisoned for his criticism of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and later exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile. In 1970, he was awarded the Novel Prize for Literature. He is best known for the novels The Gulag Archipelago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The First Circle, Cancer Ward and The Red Wheel.Other works include A Storm in the Mountains, An Incident at Krechetovka Station, Matryona's Place, For The Good of the Cause, The First Circle, Prussian Nights and Two Hundred Years Together. He passed away in 2008 at the age of 89.

Director Matthew Dunster returns to Southwark Playhouse after directing the critically acclaimed You Can Still Make A Killing in 2012. Recent credits include The Sacred Flame (English Touring Theatre), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park), Mogadishu (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith and Royal Exchange- nominated for Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement In An Affiliate Theatre),The Maddening Rain (Soho Theatre), Love the Sinner (National Theatre), The Fahrenheit Twins (Barbican),Dr Faustus, Troilus and Cressida, The Frontline (Shakespeare's Globe), Saturday Night and SundayMorning, Macbeth, 1984 (Royal Exchange Theatre), You Can See The Hills, Love and Money (Royal Exchange Theatre and Young Vic - nominated for Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement In An Affiliate Theatre), Testing the Echo (Out of Joint), Some Voices, The Member of the Wedding (Young Vic), Cruising(Bush Theatre), Project B, Project D: I'm Mediocre, The Work, Port Authority (Liverpool Everyman). As well as being a writer and actor, Matthew was also a founding member of both Quarantine and The Work theatre companies. He was an Associate Director of the Young Vic for four years and is currently an Associate Artist.

OUR AJAX: Previously at Southwark Playhouse, Playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker translated Sophocles's Antigone(2011). Plays include Our Country's Good (Royal Court and Broadway), revived earlier this year in a 25th anniversary production at the St. James Theatre, and winner of the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award in 1988 and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best New Foreign Play in 1991, New Anatomies(ICA, London), Abel's Sister (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs), The Grace of Mary Traverse (Royal Court), which won the Plays and Players Most Promising Playwright Award in 1985, The Love of the Nightingale(RSC's Other Place), which won the 1989 Eileen Anderson Central TV Drama Award, Three Birds Alighting on a Field (Royal Court), which won the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Writers' Guild Award and London Critics' Circle Award in 1992, The Break of Day (Out of Joint production, Royal Court and tour), After Darwin (Hampstead Theatre), The Ash Girl (Birmingham Rep), Credible Witness (Royal Court), Galileo's Daughter (Theatre Royal, Bath), Arden City (NT Connections), The Line (Arcola Theatre) and Britannicus(Wilton's). She has recently translated and adapted Sophocles's Elektra for ACT in San Francisco (2012.) Timberlake is currently the artistic director of the Natural Perspective Theatre Company.

Director David Mercatali is Associate Director at Southwark Playhouse where he most recently directed Philip Ridley's Feathers in the Snow. For his work on Ridley's 2011 world premiere, Tender Napalm, he was longlisted for the Evening Standard Best Newcomer Award and the OffWestEnd.Com 'Offie' Award for Best Director. In 2012 he also directed the UK Tour of Tender Napalm. Previous work includes Someone to Blame (King's Head Theatre), the world premiere of Philip Ridley's Moonfleece (Riverside Studios and tour),Weights and his own play The Sound (Blue Elephant Theatre), Runners: The Return (Edinburgh Festival) and People's Day (Pleasance London). He was Assistant Director on The Eleventh Capital (Royal Court Theatre) and has developed new work at Southwark Playhouse, Paines Plough and Theatre 503.

All shows run at the Southwark Playhouse, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD. Nearest Tube: Borough / Elephant and Castle.

Performance Schedule:

FARRAGUT NORTH

Monday to Saturday at 8pm
Saturday matinees at 3.30pm

THE LOVE GIRL AND THE INNOCENT

Monday to Saturday at 8pm
Saturday matinees at 3.30pm

OUR AJAX

Monday to Saturday at 8pm
Saturday matinees at 3.30pm

Contact the Box Office online at www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk (24 HOURS/NO BOOKING FEES) or by telephone at 020 7407 0234 (NO BOOKING FEES).

Ticket Prices:

FARRAGUT NORTH
All previews £10 (11, 12 September)
£16 (£14 Conc.)

THE LOVE GIRL AND THE INNOCENT
All previews £10 (9, 10, 11, 12, 14 October)
£16 (£14 Conc.)

OUR AJAX
All previews £10 (6, 7 November)
£16 (£14 Conc.)

Concessions - Disabled people can bring one companion free of charge.