The King's Head Theatre Season to Honor Playwright Arnold Wesker's 80th Birthday

The King's Head Theatre announces a season of premieres celebrating the 80th birthday of playwright Sir Arnold Wesker.

The King’s Head Theatre is to celebrate Sir Arnold Wesker’s 80th birthday on May 24 with a season of his plays and a rarely staged opera, featuring both London and World Premiere productions.

The Wesker at 80 season will feature the London premiere of Denial, his 1997 play about false memory syndrome; the first London revival of his rarely staged opera Caritas, commissioned by Opera North for the Huddersfield Opera Festival in 1991; and the World Premiere of The Wesker Trilogy: Revisited, a stage adaptation of an unproduced film script based on his famous trilogy of plays -Chicken Soup With Barley, Roots & I’m Talking About Jerusalem - adapted for the stage by Rachel Grunwald and King’s Head Theatre Artistic Director Adam Spreadbury- Maher.

Arnold Wesker says of the season: “It is gratifying when anybody wants to do something of one’s work and I’m flattered that productions of little known works will be staged in London to mark my 80th birthday. I don’t know what people will think about the way three well known plays have been edited in The Wesker Trilogy: Revisited and I’m intrigued to find out. I adapted the plays as a film script that was ultimately never produced. Perhaps the King’s Head Theatre production will finally lead to that film being made. I’m particularly happy that Caritas is being produced - I am passionate about music and was delighted when Robert Saxton wanted to make a opera out of my play. It’s only previously had a solo performance in London at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.”

The King’s Head?Theatre presents Wesker at 80:

Denial
15 May - 9 June 2012
The London premiere of Wesker’s?false memory play
At what point does natural physical affection between parent and child become something more sinister? And if an adult suddenly 'remembers' that a loved parent abused them years earlier, can the memory be trusted? Wesker's provocative drama exploring false memory syndrome was first seen at the Bristol Old Vic in 2000 and now gets its London premiere directed by Adam Spreadbury-Maher. This promises to be a taut and unsettling production about the dangerous recesses of the human mind and the devastating effect of a daughter's 'recovered memories' on an apparently happy family.

Caritas
20 May - 10 June 2012
The first London revival of the opera by Arnold Wesker &?Robert Saxton
Teenager Christine Carpenter has renounced her family, fiancé and freedom to become an anchoress, immured in a church cell in order to get closer to God. As she waits expectantly for a divine revelation, months and years slip past, and her faith and sanity gradually slip away. Set against the backdrop of the Peasants' Revolt in 1377 and based on actual events, Robert Saxton and Arnold Wesker's opera explores questions of personal freedom and religious fundamentalism which are powerfully relevant to the modern world. Director and Designer Pamela Howard has an international career as a scenographer spanning five decades. She has recently made a name for herself as a director of 20th century opera, with stagings of world premieres by Martin? and Janá?ek in the Czech Republic and the USA.

The Wesker?Trilogy: Revisited
April 2013
All three plays intertwined with new material in one evening
The world premiere of a new stage adaptation of Wesker’s unproduced film script of his trilogy Chicken Soup With Barley, Roots and I’m Talking About Jerusalem
An extract from the introduction to Arnold Wesker’s The Trilogy (Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots and I’m talking About Jerusalem) as published by Methuen. “Some twenty years later I was commissioned to write a film script of The Trilogy. John Dexter had once said he’d like to make the film using Roots as the spine. I took up his suggestion. The first shots are of Beatie returning home. From then on we flash back to scenes of the other two plays. But I made changes. I threw out much and - notice my use of the word - ‘remembered’ new material. It’s a fresh work. The Trilogy revisited. A fourth script rather than an adaptation of the three plays. A rethinking of my past. The film has not yet been made. Perhaps it’s awaiting its time.’ "

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