4:30pm Tuesday 23rd June 2009
By Jim Greenhalf
After 17 years as a touring theatre company, Halifax-based Northern Broadsides has landed its first West End transfer.
The company’s joint production with West Yorkshire Playhouse of Shakespeare’s Othello, starring Lenny Henry in the title role, has been snapped up by producer Sonia Friedman for a 12-week run at Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall.
Broadsides’ artistic director Barrie Rutter, who persuaded the comedian to make his stage debut as Othello in a ten-week regional tour earlier this year and also directed and acted in the play, couldn’t be more pleased.
“We’re doing it in London from September 12 to December 12. It’s selling already. It’s taken more than £200,000. We share the profits with West Yorkshire Playhouse so we won’t come out of it with a lot of money,” he said.
Broadsides have played London before. The company did A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the New Globe on the South Bank in 1996. Two years before, they did Richard III at the Tower of London.
They have also taken their Shakespeare productions to China, the United States, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany and Ireland.
Broadsides have also performed King Lear, Macbeth, Henry V and Richard III at Salts Mill.
Barrie said Sonia Friedman made her mind up about Othello in March, after the show opened at West Yorkshire Playhouse – attracting audiences totalling 22,000 during the month.
“It’s sweet serendipity and good luck. Sonia Friedman and I were colleagues when I was at the National Theatre – she was in the education department.
“Now she’s got Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia on at The Duke of York’s and she’s got shows on Broadway. It’s wonderful, especially for Lenny. It will be his West End debut,” he added.
One casualty, however, is the proposed production of Hamlet, which was planned for this autumn. It will now have to wait.
Future Broadsides productions have already been planned for the rest of this year as well as all of 2010.
Barrie won’t be playing Brabantio in the London run of Othello. He’ll be in Estonia directing a production of Richard III.
In November, through to Christmas, Broadsides will also be doing a stage version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure Treasure Island.
Next year. Barrie will be directing Tom Paulin’s version of Euripedes’s tragedy Medea, and Harold Brighouse’s one-act play The Game, which is about football.
“That will be on in time for the World Cup. It’s relevant to what’s going on now with all these transfers,” Rutter said.
Conrad Nelson, the Broadsides associate artistic director, musical director and actor, will be directing an adaptation of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and the stage version of George Orwell’s 1984.
“He’s got some great ideas for 1984 which are a million miles away from me,” Barrie said, pleased that the company now has two experienced directors to share the load.
But it’s the London transfer that is causing all the excitement. A London run opens doors, not least the one that leads to national accolades such as the Olivier Awards.
Two of West Yorkshire Playhouse’s past productions – Singin’ In The Rain and The Thirty-Nine Steps – won Oliviers after transferring from Leeds to the capital.
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