Creative Team Set For European Premiere of Michael Healey's 1979

The creative team has been set for the European première of award-winning playwright Michael Healey’s hit satirical political comedy 1979 at the Finborough Theatre. Jimmy Walters directs, with design by Mim Houghton and sound design by Julian Starr.

The production opens on 4 January 2024, with previews from 2 January, and runs until 27 January 2024.

This fast-paced satirical political comedy is an illuminating insight into the rapidly changing world of Conservative party politics.

Jimmy Walters, Artistic Director of Proud Haddock, says: “As the UK heads into what will almost certainly be another General Election year, the timeliness of our production is very apt, and will hopefully bring some much-needed light relief to our own political landscape.”

In May 1979, Progressive Conservative Joe Clark was elected as Canada’s youngest ever Prime Minister.

By Christmas 1979, it looked as though it was all over.

But Clark is young and idealistic, resolute on making his mark in office, and governing for the whole country, not just his own party supporters. Faced with a critical decision, his colleagues – including his predecessor Pierre Trudeau – take the opportunity to steer him in completely different directions…

1979 opened to great critical acclaim on its première in Calgary in 2017, and received six Betty Mitchell Award nominations. The production subsequently ran at the Berkeley Street Theatre in Toronto in 2019.

Michael Healey is a playwright and actor. His first play, Kicked, was produced at the Fringe of Toronto Festival in 1996, subsequently toured across Canada and internationally, and won Toronto’s most prestigious theatre award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play. The Drawer Boy, his first full-length play, premièred in Toronto in 1999, and won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play. Healey’s other works include The Road To Hell (co-authored with Kate Lynch), Plan B, Rune Arlidge, The Innocent Eye Test, The Nuttalls, and Are You Okay. Finborough Theatre has presented three productions of his work including his UK debut with Generous, the London première of The Drawer Boy and the UK première of Proud. His trilogy focusing on Canadian values and politics, entitled Generous, Courageous, and Proud has had multiple productions in Canada, and his plays have won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play five times. He has also adapted works by Chekhov, Molnar, Hecht and MacArthur, Dürrenmatt and Bernard Shaw for the Stratford Festival, the Shaw Festival and Soulpepper, Toronto. Healey’s newest play The Master Plan, will première in Toronto in Autumn 2023.

Artistic Director of Proud Haddock Jimmy Walters directs. Previous credits at Finborough Theatre include Square Rounds, The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, How to Survive an Apocalypse and A Subject of Scandal and Concern. Other directing credits include The Skin Game, Billy Bishop Goes To War and The Dog Beneath The Skin (Jermyn Street Theatre), Mrs Orwell (Southwark Playhouse), Julius Caesar (Saatchi Gallery), A Naughty Night With Noël Coward (Old Red Lion Theatre) Improbable Fiction (Courtyard Theatre), Hamlet (Bedouin Shakespeare Company), I the Jury (Hen and Chickens Theatre), Watching Paint Dry (Barons Court Theatre), Breaded Butler (Troubadour) and Dear Ray (Edinburgh Festival). Credits as Assistant Director include Young Shakespeare Company tours of Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet (Bloomsbury Theatre), Othello (Riverside Studios) and Knock Yourself Out (Courtyard Theatre).

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