The Offing - Freesheet programme

COMING SOON TO LIVE THEATRE

A LIVE THEATRE co-production with STEPHEN JOSEPH THEATRE

WED 3 – SAT 27 NOV 2021

Created & Performed by Your Aunt Fanny & Bonnie and the Bonnettes. Presented in association with Live Theatre

BONNIE & FANNY’S CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR Wed 1 – Thu 23 Dec

The sell-out hit returns – updated with added glitter for the perfect alternative Christmas night out.

A celebration of all things cabaret and comedy with sketches, songs, lip-syncs and dances.

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NEW FOR 2021

Can a chance encounter of two unlikely friends help lay to rest the ghosts of their past?

Order your drinks from the comfort of your seat.

@LiveTheatre #TheOffing

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Adapted from the best-selling novel by BENJAMIN MYERS by JANICE OKOH with additional material by PAUL ROBINSON

The Offing production photography credit Tony Bartholomew Live Theatre is the trading name of North East Theatre Trust, a registered charity number 513771

@LiveTheatre #TheOffing

www.live.org.uk

CAST Robert

Dulcie

Romy

Director

Movement Director

Company Stage Manager

Designer

Casting Director

Fleur Linden Beeley

Lighting Designer

Recordings performed by

Lisa Cochrane

James Gladdon

Cate Hamer

Ingvild Lakou

CREATIVE TEAM Paul Robinson Helen Goddard Sally Ferguson

Composer and Sound Designer

Ana Silvera

Associate Sound Designer

Paul Stear

Gemma Payne

Sarah Hughes CDG Ana Silvera Rob Harbron Aidan O’Rourke Jasper Heiby

Deputy Stage Manager

Assistant Stage Manager

Sara-Lee Bull

Assistant Director

Alice Kynman

Photography by Tony Bartholomew

CAST

CREATIVES

JAMES GLADDON as Robert

CATE HAMER as Dulcie

BENJAMIN MYERS | Writer

James is a graduate of ArtsEd, where he studied Acting for Film and TV for 3 years.

Theatre credits include: Eight Gigobytes of Hardcore Pornography (Orange Tree); Kindertransport (Nottingham Playhouse); Things I Know To Be True (Frantic Assembly/Lyric Hammersmith); The National Joke. Just So Stories, The Swing of Things (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Suddenly Last Summer, Abigail’s Party, Enlightenment (Theatre By The Lake); A Christmas Carol (Glasgow Citizens); A Bed Amongst the Lentils (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Crime and Punishment (Glasgow Citizens); The Heretic (Manchester Library Theatre); Way Upstream, The Country (Salisbury Playhouse); Arcadia (Manchester Library Theatre); Brighton Beach Memoirs (Watford Palace); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare’s Globe Tour); Rock ‘n’ Roll (Manchester Library Theatre); The Conservatory (Old Red Lion); Indian Ink (Salisbury Playhouse); Scenes From An Execution (Hackney Empire Studio); The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Watford Palace); Larkin with Woman, Beyond Belief: Shipman Enquiry (Manchester Library Theatre); A Conversation, Across Oka, Rafts and Dreams (Royal Exchange Studio); Dona Rosita, The Tower, Volpone (Almeida); Machinal (National Theatre); The Love of the Nightingale, Mary & Lizzie, The Tempest (RSC).

Born in Durham, Benjamin Myers is an award-winning writer and journalist. His novels include The Offing, which has been an international best-seller, and The Gallows Pole which received the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction and is being adapted for the BBC by director Shane Meadows. Other titles include a short story collection Male Tears; Beastings, which won the Portico Prize For Literature, and Pig Iron, which won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize. He has also published poetry and a non-fiction work, Under The Rock. As a journalist Myers has contributed to The Guardian, New Statesman, Mojo, NME, Le Monde, The Spectator, New Scientist and many others. His books have been translated into ten languages. He lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire.

Theatre credits include: Skeletons In Cullercoats (Live Theatre); The Hound of the Baskervilles (Northern Stage); Hamlet (Petersfield Shakespeare Festival); WORMTOWN (The Customs House); This Is (ArtsEd); The Futility of Hope (MBS).

James also co-runs a comedy sketch group called Selcouth Show which produce skits online. They filmed their first short film over the summer, Benches, due for release in late 2021.

INGVILD LAKOU as Romy Ingvild trained at Guilford School of Acting, where she studied acting for three years.

Theatre credits include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (directed by Ricky Dukes) where she appeared as Hippolyta/Titania (Greenwich Theatre); Here She Is (Theatre Peckham).

Ingvild has also made several television appearances in Raised by Wolves (HBO Max), The Tempest (CBeebies), Father Brown (BBC One) and Sister Boniface (BritBox America).

Television credits include: Eastenders, Holby City, The Town, Doctors, The Bill, Coronation Street, When I’m 64, Casualty, Inspector Lynley, Without Motive.

JANICE OKOH | Writer Janice Okoh is a multi-award-winning playwright.

Plays include: Egusi Soup, produced in 2012 and 2014; Three Birds, produced in 2013; The Gift, produced in 2020. All have toured nationally. Janice won the Bruntwood Prize in 2011 and has been shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award and The Verity Bargate Award. She has been a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and the recipient of a Channel Four Playwriting Bursary. Janice is an accomplished radio dramatist, winning the Most Outstanding Achievement Award at the BBC Audio

Drama Awards (2019) for her part in the adaptation of all six of Maya Angelou’s biographies and the award for the Best Drama Production at the BBC Radio and Music Awards (2020) for her original drama Red Earth, Red Sky. Janice also writes for television and has several projects in development.

PAUL ROBINSON | Director Paul is Artistic Director at the Stephen Joseph Theatre for whom he has directed Pinocchio, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Goth Weekend, A (Scarborough) Christmas Carol, The 39 Steps, Build a Rocket (Holden Street Theatre Award), Alice in Wonderland, Stepping Out and The Snow Queen.

He trained as director at The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, then won a directing bursary at the Manchester Royal Exchange. He was selected to attend the National Theatre’s Advance Directors’ Course and was then Staff Director at the NT for three years.

Paul was Joint Artistic Director of Theatre503 from 2007 to 2012, during which time the theatre was turned into a multi-award-winning new writing powerhouse. Credits for Theatre503 include: Salt Meets Wound, They Have Oak Trees in North Carolina (also Radio 4), The Lifesavers (TMA nominated), This Charming Man, Desolate Heaven and The Life of Stuff.

Paul took on sole leadership of Theatre503 from 2012, introducing the Trafalgar Transfer season and the Theatre503 International Playwriting Award. He has been twice nominated for Best Artistic Director at the Off West End Awards. His productions of And Then Come the Nightjars, A Handful of Stars and Land of Our Fathers garnered a total of 12 Off West End Award nominations, including Best Director.

Other credits include Breakfast with Mugabe (Bath Theatre Royal), The Swallowing Dark (Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse – TMA Award winner), the much-lauded My Mother Said I Never Should at St. James’ Theatre (starring Maureen Lipman) and Honour at The Park Theatre, London (starring Henry Goodman and Imogen Stubbs).

He is directing his first feature length film this autumn of And Then Come the Nightjars for Finite Films.

I read the book, I fell in love with it...

A NOTE FROM PAUL ROBINSON ON WHY HE DECIDED TO BRING THE OFFING TO THE STAGE My first encounter with The Offing was hearing its author Ben Myers talking about it on Radio 2’s Book Club with Jo Whiley back in September 2019. I turned on the radio and found myself right in the middle of this guy talking about this old fishing village known for its smuggling and with its maze of tiny streets – and my ears pricked up. It all sounded very familiar. By the time the interview was over, I’d ordered the book and written to his agent! By the following week, we’d optioned the book.

And like so many others, when I read the book, I fell in love with it. It tells the story of a 16-year-old boy from Durham who can’t quite bring himself to go down the mine like his forefathers. Instead, he leaves home and goes off on a wander, ending up in Robin Hood’s Bay, staying with a very bohemian type called Dulcie. And that‘s the beginning of a lifelong friendship: one of cultural and intellectual and culinary education, but also one of secrets, and ghosts which need to be laid to rest.