Jermyn Street Theatre to Open New Year with Two Works by James Hogan

Everyone is different, but every broken heart is the same. Ivy and Joan never meet. They do not know each other. They have nothing in common except a lifetime without love.

This January, Jermyn Street Theatre kicks off its twenty-first anniversary year with two plays by James Hogan. Each explores the lives of two separate women as they enter into a new chapter. The world is changing around them and, as they cling hopelessly onto long held dreams, they are being left behind

Ivy is a waitress in a Blackpool hotel whose glory days are in the past. A new management team has stepped in to change its failing fortunes buy Ivy, like the tatty fixtures and fittings around her, soon finds out that her presence is surplus to requirements. The hotel that has been her life no longer wants her and now it is time to move on. Buoyed by the futile hope of the long lost love of her life returning to marry her, she prepares to step out into the harsh reality of the outside world.

Joan, an amateur painter, travels to Venice, the city of dreams, but her dreams end there. She loses herself in fantasies of a new life, a life that will offer her an escape from her loveless marriage and the drabness of the everyday and a new start of art, culture and the finer things. Deep in her reverie, she does not notice as her world starts crumbling around her.

Lost in the abyss of loneliness, both women can still smile. But what lies hidden beyond a brave face? Starring Lynne Miller and Jack Klaff, Ivy & Joan explore what it is to live in a fast changing world and being unable to keep up, to hold onto dreams and not realise that they will stay as dreams forever. Above all they are tender and funny portraits of two lives lived in fantasy as time is passing and the chances of finding happiness are fading away.

Lynne Miller is perhaps best known for her role as WPC Cathy Marshall in The Bill from 1989 to 1996. Her stage career has included The National Theatre tour of Bill Bryden's production of The Good Hope, the West End production of Steaming, Ophelia in The Young Vic's production of Hamlet and the Old Vic productions of Trelawney of The Wells and The Merchant of Venice.

Jack Klaff is a South African-born actor, writer, director and academic. His first film role was in Star Wars and he is also known for his role in the Bond movie For Your Eyes Only. His theatrical roles have included Foppington, Trigorin, Atahuallpa, Gulliver, di Maggio, Macbeth, Iago, Theseus/Oberon, Claudius, Belch, Robert, the Blind Man in Bill Gaskill's acclaimed production of Carver.

Playwright James Hogan's work has been performed at various London fringe venues including the Gate Theatre, the Cockpit, The Old Red Lion, and the King's Head. He founded Oberon Books in 1986 championing plays by unknown writers, publishing them in high quality editions, a policy which Oberon maintains to this day.

Anthony Biggs became Artistic Director of Jermyn Street Theatre in January 2013. His previous productions at the theatre include the recent Flowers of The Forest, The South African Season, The Potsdam Quartet, the UK premiere of Ibsen's St John's Night, Charles Morgan's The River Line, Ibsen's Little Eyolf and the revival of Frederick Lonsdale's On Approval.

In 2015 Jermyn Street Theatre celebrates its twenty-first anniversary. The full Spring Season will be announced in late November. The current autumn season comprises the current first ever revival of Terence Rattigan's debut work - First Episode and the upcoming first production in sixty years of Mordaunt Shairp's controversial 1930s allusion to homosexuality - The Green Bay Tree and the acclaimed production of Flowers of the Forest by John Van Drutten. The season builds on the theatre's other recent successes, which include Maltby & Shire's Closer Than Ever, Arthur Wing Pinero's The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith, Steven Berkoff's Religion & Anarchy and the recent production of Wiliam Inge's Natural Affection.

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