Stage: A Timeless Talent & Private Lives
Actors Touring Company presents the darkly comic play Illusions this Valentine’s week
If the whole idea of Valentine’s Day is getting you down then this sharp Russian comedy may be just the ticket for you. “I guess that’s how it was meant to be. Love can only be mutual, I agree with you Albert, and forgive me for this cruel sincerity.” Ramin Gray’s production of Ivan Viripaev’s Illusions embarks on a whirlwind tour this February. Staged by ATC, this exploration into the nature of true love by Russia’s foremost contemporary playwright is the perfect antidote to the saccharine schmaltz of the Valentine’s season.
The production was critically acclaimed when it received its English Language premiere last year and was subsequently selected to feature in The Bush Theatre’s Radar Festival of new writing last November.
Passion and death, loyalty and betrayal, truth and fiction, hope and despair – Illusions is an enticing yet deceitful comedy that takes us on a journey through what true love is. Playfully unravelling the paradoxes of the lives and loves of two couples as they look back at their lives, it tells a tale of roads taken and those passed by, of understandings and misunderstandings and of the dangers of voicing certain thoughts and leaving others unsaid.
Ivan Viripaev has won several major awards for his work including the prestigious Golden Mask and the Presidential Council Prize for Literature in Russia and awards at the Venice, Warsaw and Sochi Film Festivals. Illusions is his first work to be staged in the UK.
The translator of Illusions, Cazimir Liske also performs in this production and appeared in the original Russian version of the play in Moscow. ATC presents the best in international contemporary theatre on tour in the UK and internationally. The company produces the most innovative scripts from abroad, often commissioning its own translations and creating work collaboratively with artists from the UK and internationally.
Studio Theatre, Brighton Dome, Wednesday
13 February, 7.30pm, 01273 709709, www.brightondome.org
Private Lives
If you missed it at Chichester then once again the South’s most prolific feed to the West End has achieved another great transfer. Following unanimous critical acclaim and a sell-out run at Chichester Festival Theatre, Noël Coward’s dazzling comedy, Private Lives, transfers to the West End for a strictly limited season from 22 June until 21 September 2013.
Elyot Chase (Toby Stephens) and Amanda Prynne (Anna Chancellor) are glamorous, rich, reckless… and divorced. Five years later, their love for one another is unexpectedly rekindled when they take adjoining suites of a Riviera hotel while honeymooning with their new spouses. This chance encounter instantly reignites their passion, and they fling themselves headlong into a whirlwind of love and lust once more, without a thought for partners present or turbulences past.
This much-anticipated transfer is set to blaze across the West End stage this summer in a production that proves Noël Coward still has the power to thrill, provoke and delight.
Gielgud Theatre, London. Previews from 22 June 2013. 250 top price tickets will be made available for Private Lives each week at just £10 per ticket. 170 tickets per week will be released for general sale in May. The remaining tickets will be day seats, 10 per performance, released at the Gielgud Box Office from 10am on the day of the performance.
