Jessica Barden, Kate O'Flynn, Hayley Squires, Luke Thallon and Russell Tovey Join PINTER AT THE PINTER

Some of the country's most exciting young stars - Jessica Barden, Kate O'Flynn, Hayley Squires, Luke Thallon and Russell Tovey have joined the highly-anticipated Harold Pinter season Pinter at the Pinter, together with the legendary Sir Antony Sher and Penelope Wilton.

This will be first time Barden (The End of the F**king World), O'Flynn (The Glass Menagerie), Squires (I, Daniel Blake), Thallon (Albion) and Tovey (Angels in America) have performed Pinter's work, thus introducing his plays to a whole new generation.

Russell Tovey said: "Pinter's work brings danger and wit and sexiness and magic and coolness to the Theatre and this season will bring all of that and more, like a seriously high-end boxset binge."

Sir Antony Sher, who is also making his Pinter debut, said: "This is a very special project for me - I've always longed to be in a Pinter play, and now at last I've got my chance. And what a play this is! ONE FOR THE ROAD shows Pinter at the height of his powers, I believe. He's taking on a truly difficult subject, torture, yet writing with such wit, danger and lightness of touch, it's breathtaking."

Sher and Kate O'Flynn, who impressed audiences and critics alike in Anatomy of a Suicide at the Royal Court, join the previously-announced Paapa Essiedu and Maggie Steed in the explosive first evening of the season, the must-see One for the Road / The New World Order / Mountain Language / Ashes to Ashes, directed by Jamie Lloyd and Lia Williams. BAFTA nominee Hayley Squires and stage and screen star Russell Tovey join John MacMillan and David Suchet in Lloyd's playful productions of the comedic masterpieces The Lover and The Collection. Fresh from Netflix's cult hit The End of the F**king World, Jessica Barden will lead the hilarious Pinter oddity, Night School. Following his exceptional performances in The Inheritance (Young Vic) and Albion (Almeida), Luke Thallon will feature as part of the Patrick Marber-directed The Room / Victoria Station / Family Voices, with a cast including Rupert Graves, Jane Horrocks, Emma Naomi and Nicholas Woodeson. Each evening runs for a very limited number of performances.

The World Premiere production of Pinter's newly-discovered satirical sketch, The Pres and an Officer, an anarchic attack on the Presidency, will be performed alongside One for the Road, The New World Order, Mountain Language and Ashes to Ashes from September 6th to October 20th, directed by Jamie Lloyd.

Upon finding the sketch scrawled on one of Pinter's writing pads, his widow, Lady Antonia Fraser commented: "I could have been reading something written today. 'What would Harold have thought of Trump?' People are always asking me that question. Now we know. As it were."

The role of the President will be played by a variety of surprise guest stars across the short run.

Close friend and long-term Pinter collaborator Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey) will make 12 special guest appearances, performing the witty monologue, Tess, written for her by Pinter, from the 19th November as part of the performances of Landscape and A Kind of Alaska, starring Keith Allen and Tamsin Greig.

Marking the 10th anniversary of the revered playwright's death, Pinter at the Pinter features all twenty of Pinter's one-act plays, running from September 2018 to February 2019.

The season is presented by The Jamie Lloyd Company, ATG Productions, Ben Lowy Productions, Gavin Kalin Productions and Glass Half Full Productions.

Pinter at the Pinter is an unparalleled event featuring all twenty short plays written by the greatest British playwright of the 20th Century, in the theatre that bears his name. They have never been performed together in a season of this kind. Each play runs for a limited number of performances.

The season will be presented in repertoire by a world-class cast, many of whom were Harold Pinter's friends and frequent collaborators. The cast includes Keith Allen, Jessica Barden, Ron Cook, Phil Davies, Danny Dyer, Paapa Essiedu, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves, Tamsin Greig, Jane Horrocks, Celia Imrie, John MacMillan, Emma Naomi, Tracy Ann Oberman, Kate O'Flynn, Abraham Popoola, Sir Antony Sher, John Simm, Hayley Squires, Maggie Steed, David Suchet, Luke Thallon, Russell Tovey, Penelope Wilton and Nicholas Woodeson.

Mark Rylance will make two special charity performances of Art, Truth and Politics, Pinter's Nobel Prize Lecture, in aid of the Stop the War Coalition.

Direction is by Jamie Lloyd, Patrick Marber, Lyndsey Turner, Ed Stambollouian and Lia Williams, with season design by Soutra Gilmour, lighting by Jon Clark and Richard Howell, and sound and music by George Dennis and Ben & Max Ringham.

Pinter at the Pinter is part of the Pinter 10 partnership with the BFI, The Harold Pinter Estate and Faber & Faber, which is marking the 10th anniversary of Pinter's death with a series of events celebrating the life of the most important British playwright of the 20th Century.

BFI Southbank will commemorate the anniversary with a season of Pinter's film and television productions; Pinter on Screen: Power, Sex & Politics will take place at BFI Southbank throughout June and July. Further details can be found at www.whatson.bfi.org.uk.

Harold Pinter was born in Hackney, London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 until his death on Christmas Eve 2008.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pinter was lauded throughout his life as one of the greatest living playwrights, who had a revolutionary impact on how theatre was written and performed, and who it represented on stage. An establishment agitator who challenged injustice, he became as famous for his political interventions as for his writing later in his life.

His genius was recognised within his lifetime as a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, the Companion of Honour for services to Literature, the Legion D'Honneur, the European Theatre Prize, the Laurence Olivier Award and the Moliere D'Honneur for lifetime achievement. In 1999 he was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature, in addition to 18 other honorary degrees.

After working as an actor under the stage name David Baron, Pinter went on to be a theatrical playwright, director, screenwriter and actor.

He wrote his first play The Room in 1957 and from there 29 plays, including The Birthday Party, The Hothouse, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, Old Times, No Man's Land, and Betrayal. Sketches include The Black and White, Request Stop, That's your Trouble, Night, and Precisely.

Pinter directed 27 theatre productions, including James Joyce's Exiles, David Mamet's Oleanna, seven plays by Simon Gray and scores of his own plays including his last, Celebration, paired with his first, The Room, at The Almeida Theatre, London in the spring of 2000.

In film he wrote 21 screenplays including The Pumpkin Eater, The Servant, The Go-Between, The French Lieutenant's Woman and Sleuth.

He continued to act under his own name, on stage and screen. He last acted two years before his death in 2006, when he appeared in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at The Royal Court Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson.

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