Wil Johnson and Allyson Ava-Brown Lead THE SWALLOWING DARK, 11/1-26

Theatre503 and the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse present the world première of The Swallowing Dark, a new play by Lizzie Nunnery. Directed by Theatre503's joint-Artistic Director, Paul Robinson, it stars Wil Johnson (Waking The Dead and Adulthood) and Allyson Ava-Brown (Secret Diary of a Call Girl). It will run at Theatre503 in London from 1 to 26 November, after its premiere at Liverpool's Playhouse Studio from 20 to 29 October.

The Swallowing Dark is written from first hand refugee experiences through Refugee Action. It follows story of refugee Canaan, who with his young son has escaped the horrors of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe to a new life in Liverpool. Canaan thought he'd left the past in the country he'd fled, but when Martha, a British Immigration caseworker reopens his case, he is fighting for his life once again. Fact, fiction and folklore collide to expose the lies we tell for the ones we love.

Lizzie Nunnery's Intemperence was shortlisted for the Meyer-Whitworth Award in 2007, she was also one of the writers of the critically acclaimed Unprotected, which was awarded the Amnesty International Award for Freedom of Expression. Her latest play, A Word Doesn't Exist was performed at the Liverpool Everyman last year. This production of The Swallowing Dark follows rehearsed readings at 2009's Everyword Festival and in Sao Paulo on a British Council-led visit to Brazil. In 2010 it was nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2010.

The intense two-hander will feature Wil Johnson as Canaan and Allyson Ava-Brown as Martha. Johnson is best known for his role as DI Spencer Jordan in nine series of the BBC's Waking the Dead, he was also in Noel Clarke's Adulthood and was last on stage in Birmingham Rep's Serious Money. Ava-Brown recently appeared in Birmingham Rep's The Wiz and in ITV's Secret Diary Of A Call Girl.

The Swallowing Dark will coincide with the fifth anniversary of Paul Robinson and Tim Roseman's artistic directorship at Theatre503. In that time they have experienced numerous success stories from Porn the Musical, which won an Offie Award for best New Musical, The Lifesavers, nominated for Best New Play by TMA in 2009 and, of course, The Mountaintop, winner of Best New Play at the Olivier Awards 2010 and now starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett on Broadway.

 

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