Casting Announced For QUAINT HONOUR at Finborough Theatre

Presented for the first time since its world premiere in 1958 and celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 which decriminalised homosexuality in the UK, Quaint Honour by Roger Gellert runs at the Finborough Theatre, playing Sunday and Monday evening and Tuesday matinees from Sunday, 29 October 2017.

A boy's boarding school in the late 1950s. Homosexuality in the UK is illegal, but behind closed doors and behind the back of the Headmaster, gay sexual activity between the students is rife.

When one of the pupils accepts a challenge to seduce a younger student, he sets in motion a dangerous game of manipulation and corruption, causing devastating consequences that neither student could ever have imagined...

Examining the effects of sexual oppression at a time when the lives of young queer people were challenged by both the law and the education system, this highly controversial and brutally frank play - originally produced at the Arts Theatre to avoid the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain - is now presented onstage for the first time in over half a century. Kenneth Tynan said of the original production that it is "The most honest and informative play about homosexuality that has yet been performed in England'.

Age guidance 18+

Playwright Roger Gellert (1927-2013) began his career as a script reader for the iconic theatrical agent Peggy Ramsay, before going on to become Literary Editor for the Royal Shakespeare Company where he translated the plays of Jean Giraudoux, and Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle which played at the Aldwych Theatre in 1962, directed by William Gaskill. For the BBC, he translated the radio adaptations of Büchner's Danton's Death and Pol Quentins's La Liberté est un dimanche. He was also a theatre critic for The New Statesman and a presenter for BBC Radio's Third Programme. Quaint Honour was his only original play.

Director Christian Durham has recently directed Children of Eden and the double OffWestEnd nominated Spend Spend Spend (Union Theatre). He is currently the Associate Director of Disney's The Little Mermaid in Europe and Japan, while his Russian production won the Golden Mask Award for Best Musical. Direction includes Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad (Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts), Animus and Just So (Bridewell Theatre), Presterton Hall (Liverpool Theatre School), Ute Lemper (Stuttgart), Debbie Does Dallas, nominated for the Best Musical Production in the Musical Theatre Matters Awards (E4 Udderbelly at the Edinburgh Festival), Taboo, winner of the Best Musical award in the Manchester Evening News Awards (National Tour), a workshop presentation of a new musical of Peter Pan (Lyric Theatre, West End), Curtains (Arts Educational School), Pieces of String (Waterloo East Theatre), Liola and Cloud 9 (Drama Studio London), #Henna Nights (Hen and Chickens Theatre), Edward II (Genesis Director's Programme at The Young Vic), Real Classy Affair (Soho Studio Theatre), Only You Can Save Mankind (Pleasance Edinburgh), Urban Folk Tales (Lost Theatre Festival), Connections (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) and Proud (New Wimbledon Theatre Studio). Associate Direction includes Michael Pennington's King Lear (National Tour), Pure Imagination (St James Theatre), Studies for a Portrait
(Kings Head Theatre), Zorro (Garrick Theatre and National Tour), the Donmar Warehouse's Guys and Dolls (National Tour) and The New Statesman (National Tour). Resident Direction includes Chicago (West End) and The King And I (National Tour).

The cast is:

Jack Archer | Hamilton
Trained at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Theatre includes Nivelli's War for which he received a Best Actor nomination in The Stage Debut Awards (Lyric Theatre, Belfast, and New Victory Theatre, New York) and Confessional (Southwark Playhouse). Theatre whilst training includes All's Well That Ends Well, Blue and One Man, Two Guvnors.
Television includes Lala's Ladiez.

Simon Butteriss | Hallowes
Productions for the Finborough include Florodora and Princess Ida.
Theatre includes The Winslow Boy (Noël Coward Theatre), Sweeney Todd (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), The Relapse (The Old Vic), Cats (New London Theatre), An Italian Straw Hat (Shaftesbury Theatre), The Mikado (Savoy Theatre), The White Guard, Peter Pan and Shakespeare Live! (Royal Shakespeare Company), Valmouth, Goodbye Mr Chips, Henry V, Forty Years On and Divorce Me, Darling (Chichester Festival Theatre), A Winter's Tale (Watermill Theatre, Newbury), Eugene Onegin and Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith), My Fair Lady (Paris, Cologne, Muscat), Candide (London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, Cologne) and Hay Fever and The Phantom of the Opera (National Tours).
Opera includes principal roles at La Scala, Milan, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Liceu Barcelona, Oper Köln, Muscat Royal Opera, Paris Châtelet, Welsh National Opera, Grange Park Opera, Garsington Opera, Aldeburgh Opera and in Vienna, Rome, Bregenz, Beijing, Tokyo, Venice and Amsterdam. He has been a guest principal with English National Opera since 2008. He has sung the Gilbert and Sullivan patter roles at the Savoy Theatre, the BBC Proms and throughout the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand.
Film includes Topsy-Turvy, Chasing Liberty, Peter Warlock, Some Little Joy, Falstaff and Draw On Sweet Night.
Television includes By The Sword Divided, Stalky and Co, The Silver Buckle, She Stoops to Conquer, Goodbye Mr Chips, Let Them Eat Cake, The Lenny Henry Show, After The War and Spitting Image. He wrote and presented A Motley Pair, A Salaried Wit and A Gooseberry Fool for Sky Arts.
He has written, translated and directed for stage, screen, radio and opera.
Future engagements include A Midsummer Night's Dream (English National Opera).

Oliver Gully | Park
Trained at Guildford School of Acting.
Theatre includes The Mousetrap (National Tour), Re:Act (St. James Theatre), Hamlet, Behind the Garden Wall and Ring of Fire (Courtyard Theatre), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Immersion Theatre), Into No Man's Land (The Unseen Hour), The Backward Fall (Penny Productions) and Timebomb (Poleroid Theatre).
Television includes I'm Nathan.

Jacques Miche | Turner
Theatre includes Faust X2 (Watermill Theatre, Newbury), Saving Jason (Park Theatre), Bugsy Malone (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith), Oliver! (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), Beauty and the Beast (National Tour) and A Christmas Carol (Royal Northern Ballet Company).
Film includes The Silent.
Television includes The Revolting World of Stanley Brown.

Harley Viveash | Tully
Trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School where he was winner of a Laurence Olivier Bursary and the Erika Newman Special Prize in memory of Tim Pigott-Smith.
Theatre includes Julius Caesar (Bristol Old Vic), Our Town (Circomedia) and The Comedy of Errors (Southwark Playhouse and Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre). Theatre whilst training includes Equus, Measure for Measure, The Country Wife, Festen, Vivat Vivat Regina and Treasure Island.

For more information visit www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk.

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