20 September 2017
Newsdesk
The exciting cast have now been announced for the first London revival in over 20 years of Insignificance by two-time Olivier Award winner Terry Johnson. Alice Bailey Johnson (The Libertine, Royal Haymarket; Oh What A Lovely War, UK Tour; Desdemona, Park Theatre), Simon Rouse (Tribes, Crucible Theatre; The Dresser, Duke of York’s Theatre; Hangmen, Wyndham’s Theatre), Tom Mannion (Hamlet Who’s There, Trafalgar Studios; The Autumn Garden, Jermyn Street Theatre; The Patriotic Traitor, Park Theatre) and Oliver Hembrough (Echo’s End, Salisbury Playhouse; Wasted, West Yorkshire Playhouse; A Further Education, Hampstead Theatre) will bring this hilarious and bittersweet comedy to life on stage at the Arcola Theatre.
Insignificance centres on an imagined meeting between Albert Einstein, who is deliberating whether to testify to McCarthy’s House Committee, and Marilyn Monroe, who is being pursued by her jealous husband Joe DiMaggio. Over one night in a hotel room, the characters grapple playfully with the difficulties of knowing the world, each other and themselves.
Director David Mercateli comments, When Insignificance premiered, America had a celebrity president in Ronald Reagan. Now it has a celebrity president once again. It’s a fascinating time to revive this play about four individuals who are also towering icons, at the top of their games. What’s the reality of that for them? And what happens when the fantasies we project on to people become part our reality, part of the world we live in?
Insignificance premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1982, and was voted one of the top hundred plays in the NT2000 Platform series. It won Terry Johnson the Plays & Players Award for Best Play, and the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.
What if four icons of Ike's America - Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, Joe DiMaggio and Senator McCarthy - met in a New York hotel room in 1953?... [Insignificance is] a piece that works on just about every level: the intellectual, the emotional, the playful...one of the landmark plays of the decade (The Guardian).
Performance Dates Wednesday 18th October – Saturday 18th November 2017
Monday – Saturday, 7.30pm
Saturday matinees, 3pm
Wednesday 15th November, 3pm
Running time 2 hours including interval
Twitter @arcolatheatre, #Insignificance
Writer Terry Johnson
Director David Mercateli
Designer Max Dorey
Lighting Richard Williamson
Sound Designer Dinah Mullen
The Actress Alice Bailey Johnson
The Professor Simon Rouse
The Senator Tom Mannion
The Ballplayer Oliver Hembrough
Location Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL
www.arcolatheatre.com, 020 7503 1646
How to get there Arcola Theatre is located on Ashwin Street, off Kingsland Road. The nearest stations are Dalston Kingsland and Dalston Junction (on the London Overground). Both connect with Highbury and Islington (on the Victoria and Overground Lines), Whitechapel (on the District and Hammersmith and City Lines) and Stratford (on National Rail and the Central, Jubilee and DLR Lines). Hackney Downs station, ten minutes by train from Liverpool Street, is a 3-minute bus ride on numbers 30 and 56.
Box Office Tickets are available for £12-22 from www.arcolatheatre.com and on 020 7503 1646.
Pay What You Can Tuesdays, in person from 6pm.
