My City
By Stephen Poliakoff
Directed By Stephen Poliakoff
production information
How would you feel if, 15 years after you last saw them, you bumped into the one person who had the biggest influence on your life?
On a dusky evening, old friends Richard and Julie find their primary school headmistress lying on a park bench in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral. As they become reacquainted with her and the other teachers that helped shape them, memories of their vivid and imaginative lessons come to life and their tales of London inspire Richard and Julie once more.
Stephen Poliakoff's first new theatre play for over a decade celebrates the power of storytelling to raise the human spirit.
Dates & Tickets
Previews Thu 8 – Wed 14 September
Press night Thu 15 September (7pm)
Evening performances 7.30pm
Saturday matinees 2.30pm from 17 September
Wednesday matinees 2.30pm on 19 & 26 October & 2 November
SPECIAL EVENTS
Happy Mondays 12 September Discounted tickets for Young Friends of the Almeida.
Panel Discussion Thu 29 September 2011 (post show)
Talkback Mon 10 October 2011 Post show discussion with Stephen Poliakoff and Robin Nelson, writer of Stephen Poliakoff: On Stage and Screen. Free to same day ticket holders.
ASSISTED PERFORMANCES
Captioned Tue 25 October, 7.30pm
Audio Described Sat 29 October, 2.30pm (Touch Tour at 1pm)
Hannah Arterton
Waitress
Hannah trained at RADA. My City is Hannah’s professional debut.
Theatre at RADA includes: Oh What A Lovely War; Entertaining Mr Sloane; The Crucible; Measure for Measure; A Waste of Time; Henry iV Parts 1&2; Electra; The Revenger’s Tragedy; The Rivals; A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Siân Brooke
Julie
Siân has recently received rave reviews for her role in Ecstasy, which transferred from Hampstead Theatre to the Duchess Theatre.
Theatre includes: Joseph K (Gate Theatre); Wanderlust; Dying City; Harvest; Just A Bloke; The One With The Oven (Royal Court); Dido, Queen of Carthage (National Theatre); The Wizard of Oz (Royal Festival Hall);The Birthday Party (Lyric Hammersmith); In The Club (Hampstead Theatre); How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found (Sheffield Crucible); A Midsummer Night's Dream; Romeo and Juliet; King Lear; Poor Beck (RSC); Absolutely! Perhaps (Wyndhams Theatre).
Television includes: Silk;New Tricks; Vexed;Doc Martin;The Commander;Misommer Murders - The Magician'sNephew;The Fixer;Cape Rath; Hotel Babylon II;Housewife 49;A Touch of Frost – Endangered Species; Foyle's War.
Film includes: Hamlet (RSC / Poisson Rouge).
Sorcha Cusack
Summers
Siân has recently received rave reviews for her role in Ecstasy, which transferred from Hampstead Theatre to the Duchess Theatre.
Theatre includes: Joseph K (Gate Theatre); Wanderlust; Dying City; Harvest; Just A Bloke; The One With The Oven (Royal Court); Dido, Queen of Carthage (National Theatre); The Wizard of Oz (Royal Festival Hall);The Birthday Party (Lyric Hammersmith); In The Club (Hampstead Theatre); How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found (Sheffield Crucible); A Midsummer Night's Dream; Romeo and Juliet; King Lear; Poor Beck (RSC); Absolutely! Perhaps (Wyndhams Theatre).
Television includes: Silk;New Tricks; Vexed;Doc Martin;The Commander;Misommer Murders - The Magician'sNephew;The Fixer;Cape Rath; Hotel Babylon II;Housewife 49;A Touch of Frost – Endangered Species; Foyle's War.
Film includes: Hamlet (RSC / Poisson Rouge).
Tom Riley
Richard
Tom trained at LAMDA and has since received critical acclaim for a variety of theatre and television roles. He was nominated for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play at the 2011 Drama Desk Awards for his role in Arcadia (101 Productions / Broadway), as well as a nomination for Best Male Performance at the Off West End Theatre Awards for his role in Hurts Given and Received (Riverside Studios / Wrestling School)
Theatre includes: Paradise Regained; The Vertical Hour; Censorship; Victory; The Entertainer; The Woman Before (Royal Court); Peter Gill Workshop.
Television includes: Monroe; Bedlam; A Bouquet Of Barbed Wire; No Heroics; Poirot; Freeezing; Lost In Austen; Lewis; Casualty; Miss Marple; Paparazzi.
Film includes: St. Trinians 2; Happy Ever Afters; Return To The House On Haunted Hill; I Want Candy; A Few Days In September
David Troughton
Minken
David has worked extensively at the RSC in productions including Macbeth; Henry IV Parts 1&2; Richard II; Richard III (winner of Best Actor Globe Theatre Award); The Devil Is An Ass; The Tempest; Venetian Twins and Troilus and Cressida. David won a Best Actor Globe Theatre Award for his role in Richard III at the RSC.
For the Almeida: Our Father.
Theatre Includes: Season's Greetings; Playing With Fire; Sergeant Musgrave's Dance; Don Juan; Peter Pan; Measure For Measure (NationalTheatre); Inherit The Wind (Old Vic); Enjoy ( Bath / Tour / Gielgud Theatre); The Skin Of Your Teeth (Young Vic); The Hinge Of The World (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre); The Cherry Orchard (RSC / Albery Theatre); Loot; The Fool (Royal Court); Wedding Feast; The Old School Bench (Leeds Playhouse); The Changeling (Riverside Studios); Fool For Love (Lyric Hammersmith / National Theatre); Parents' Day (Shakespeare’s Globe).
Film Includes: Nouvelle France; Twelfth Night; Madame Bovary; A Very Polish Practice; Captain Jack; The Chain; Dance With A Stranger.
Tracey Ullman
Lambert
Tracey appeared on stage in 1982 in the original production of Rita, Sue and Bob Too at the Royal Court and will be making her long-awaited return to the London stage in My City. Tracey is best known for her television appearances in hit sketch comedies A Kick up the Eighties, Three of a Kind and Girls on Top. In 1987 she launched The Tracey Ullman Show which after receiving much success in the UK was taken to the US becoming the long-running series Tracey Takes On…
Theatre includes: Taming of the Shrew (Delacorte Theatre).
Television includes: Tracey Ullman: A Class Act; The Tracey Ullman Show State of the Union; Once Upon a Mattress; Ally McBeal.
Film includes: The Tale of Despereaux; I Could Never Be Your Woman; Corpse Bride; A Dirty Shame; Small Time Crooks; Pret A Porter; Bullets Over Broadway; I’ll Do Anything; Household Saints; Robin Hood: Men in Tights; Happily Ever After; I Love You to Death; Jumpin’ Jack Flash; Plenty.
Stephen Poliakoff
Writer & Director
Award-winning playwright, director and scriptwriter Stephen Poliakoff began his career in the theatre becoming resident playwright at the National Theatre at the age of 23. He won the Evening Standard most promising playwright award in 1976 forHitting TownandCity Sugar and has since written over 20 plays which have premiered in the UK. He wrote and directed his first feature filmHidden Citywhich was selected for the Venice Film Festival in 1987.
Theatre includes: Pretty Boy; Heroes; Strawberry Fields; Breaking the Silence; Coming In To Land; Sweet Panic; Blinded by the Sun; Talk of the City; Remember This.
Television includes: Caught on a Train; She's Been Away Shooting The Past; Perfect Strangers; The Lost Prince; Friends and Crocodiles; Joe's Palace.
Film includes: Glorious 39; Close My Eyes; Century; Bloody Kids.
Lez Brotherston
Design
For the Almeida: Measure for Measure; Duet for One (West End transfer); In a Dark, Dark House; Dying For It; Brighton Rock; The Lightning Play.
Theatre includes: Women Beware Women; Really Old Like 45; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (National Theatre); Design For Living; The Real Thing; Dancing At Lughnasa (Old Vic); Sister Act (West End / Germany / Broadway); Umbrellas of Cherbourg; The Rise and Fall of Little Voice; Under The Blue Sky; Dickens Unplugged; In Celebration; French and Saunders Live; Victoria Wood At It Again (West End); Much Ado About Nothing (RSC); The Dark, Little Foxes (Donmar Warehouse).
Opera includes: L’Elisir d’Amore (Glyndebourne Festival Opera); Maria Padilla (Buxton Festival); La Somnambula (Teatro Municipale, Rio de Janeiro); Hansel and Gretel (Opera Zuid / Opera Northern Ireland).
Dance includes: Lord Of the Flies; Cinderella (Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance for Set and Costume); Dorian Gray; Edward Scissorhands (New Adventures); Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Japan / Sadler’s Wells); Play Without Words ( National Theatre / New Adventures); The Car Man; Swan Lake (Tony Award winning); Highland Fling (Adventures in Motion Pictures); Dracula; Romeo & Juliet; Carmen; Giselle; Swan Lake (Northern Ballet).
Oliver Fenwick
Lighting Designer
For the Almeida: Ruined.
Theatre includes: The Holy Rosenburgs; Happy Now? (National Theatre); Disconnect (Royal Court); A Number (Chocolate Factory); Julius Caesar; The Drunks; The Grain Store (RSC); The Kingdom of Fabrication (The Print Room); The Beggars Opera (Regents Park Open Air Theatre); Ghosts; Kean; The Solid Gold Cadillac; Secret Rapture (West End); The Contingency Plan; If There is I Haven’t Found It Yet (Bush Theatre); Private Lives; The Giant; Glass Eels; Comfort Me With Apples (Hampstead theatre); Restoration (Headlong); Much Ado About Nothing; Mary Stewart (Hipp Theatre, Sweden); Far From the Madding Crowd ( English Touring Theatre); Lady From The Sea; She Stoops To Conquer (Birmingham Rep); Realism; Mongrel Island; Pure Gold ( Soho Theatre); Hamlet; The Caretaker; Comedy of Errors; Bird Calls; Iphigenia (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield); The Chairs (Gate Theatre); Hedda Gabler ( Gate Theatre, Dublin); The Elephant Man (Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield / tour); Henry V; Mirandolina; A Convseration (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester); My Fair Lady (Cameron Mackintosh / National Theatre); Tis Pity She’s a Whore; The Doll’s House; Hay Fever (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Endgame (Everyman Liverpool); Sunshine on Leith (Dundee Rep / tour); Jack and the Beanstalk ( Barbican Theatre); Heartbreak House (Watford Palace); A Model Girl (Greenwich theatre); Noises Off; All My Sons; Dr. Faustus (Liverpool Playhouse); The Picture; Hysteria; Children Of A Lesser God (Salisbury Playhouse); Follies; Insignificance; Breaking the Code (Theatre Royal, Northampton); Tartuffe; The Gentleman From Olmedo; The Venetian Twins; Hobson’s Choice; Dancing at Lughnasa; Love in a Maze (Watermill Theatre); Cinderella (Bristol Old Vic).
Opera includes: The Merry Widow (Opera North & Sydney Opera House); Samson et Delilah; Lohengrin (Royal Opera House); The Trojan Trilogy; The Nose; The Gentle Giant (Royal Opera House); The Threepenny Opera (The Opera Group); L’Opera Seria (Batignano Festival).
Ben and Max Ringham
Sound and Music
Theatre and dance includes: Little Eagles; American Trade (RSC / Hampstead Theatre); The Infidelity Project; Episode (The Place); Racing Demon; Hamlet; An Enemy Of The People (Sheffield Crucible); Les Parents Terrible (Trafalgar Studios); Electric Hotel (Sadler’s Wells / Fuel); Salome (Headlong); The Man From Stratford (Ambassadors); The Author ( also touring); The Pride (Olivier Award for Best Overall Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre); Remembrance Day (Royal Court); Polar Bears; Phaedra (Donmar Warehouse); Piaf (Donmar Warehouse / Vaudeville Theatre / Buenos Aires);The Little Dog Laughed (Garrick Theatre); Three Days Of Rain (Apollo Theatre / West End); The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice (Vaudeville Theatre); Really Old Like Forty Five; Henry IV Parts I & II (National Theatre); Branded; All About My Mother (Old Vic); Contains Violence (Lyric Hammersmith); The Lover / The Collection (Comedy Theatre / West End); The Caretaker (Sheffield Crucible / Tricycle Theatre / Touring), Amato Saltone; What If…?; Tropicana; Dance Bear Dance; The Ballad Of Bobby Francois (Shunt); The Pigeon (BAC).
Ben and Max are associate artists with the Shunt collective and two thirds of the band Superthriller.
Andy Pryror
Casting Director
Theatre includes: That Day We Sang (Manchester Opera House)
Television includes: Doctor Who; Marchlands; Upstairs Downstairs; Whitechapel 1 & 2; Moses Jones; Survivors ;Stuart – A Life Backwards; The Chatterley Affair; Life on Mars; Cutting It; Life Begins; The Long Firm; Cracker; In a Land of Plenty; The Scarlet Pimpernel; 40; I’m Alan Partridge; Othello; Murphy’s Law; Bedtime; Linda Green; Our Friends in the North; Shooting the Past; Perfect Strangers; The Lost Prince; Friends & Crocodiles; Gideon’s Daughter; Joe’s Palace; Capturing Mary.
Film includes: United; Longtime Dead; Bent; Different for Girls; Beautiful Thing; Trainspotting; Glorious ’39.
"Ullman's excellent performance...commands the tale-spinners eerie universe...Lez Brotherston's set plays cunning variations on the London skyline - the city is never the same place twice."
Sunday Times
"This production can make one feel, on leaving the theatre, that one is seeing through London to other cities shimmering on its ether…Tracey Ullman is so very disciplined that she compels our attention"
Financial Times
"Welcome back Stephen Poliakoff…the master penman… haunting, contemporary tale of chance encounters and mysterious city nights… an exhilarating sense of a powerful imagination at work…the cast is excellent… Miss Lambert is played by the wonderfully expressive Tracey Ullman."
The Arts Desk
"And Poliakoff conjures an inner city world of rooftop bars, cellar clubs, night time and tragic interiors with an expressive language of theatrical poetry, superbly realised in the designs of Lez Brotherston, the sound of Ben and Max Ringham and, especially, the lighting of Oliver Fenwick."
Whatsonstage.com
(Critic's Choice) "With Lez Brotherston’s haunting skyscape and Ben and Max Ringham’s heartstopping sound and music, it evokes all the surge and vitality and layers of buried past in the dark city … Tracy Ullman, in a career-defining performance as a burnt-out former primary school headmistress, is a king of shaman, walking London streets all night, sleepless."
The Times
(Pick of The Week Guardian Guide) "The play, like much of Poliakoff’s work, makes you look at the metropolis with fresh eyes … Tracey Ullman, also making an overdue return to the London stage, is charismatic as Miss Lambert."
The Guardian
"As well as Ullman’s mesmerisingly enigmatic Miss Lambert there is fine support from Sorcha Cusack and the splendidly disconcerting David Troughton as two of her former colleagues, and from Tom Riley and Sian Brooke as their puzzled former pupils."
The Daily Telegraph
"Poliakoff’s well-acted production…David Troughton is a tremendously touching mix of boyish enthusiasm and deep, underlying anxiety in the role of Mr Minken…Tracey Ullman brings a born headteacher’s unforced magnetism to Miss Lambert"
The Independent
"Intriguing is a word that sums up this new play by Poliakoff, his first in 12 years. From this initial premise unfolds a highly evocative piece that is part comedy, part thriller, part modern fable. Complex and highly engrossing, it delves into the souls of the characters and asks, what becomes of us all? … In this, the play is as much a homage to the city as a portrait of the lost souls who inhabit it, and Poliakoff paints his picture expertly …Miss Lambert is a wonderful creation, beautifully played by Tracey Ullman."
officiallondontheatre.com
Additional information
Running Time is 2 hours and 40 mins, including one interval
Cast & Creatives
Hannah Arterton
Siân Brooke
Sorcha Cusack
Tom Riley
David Troughton
Tracey Ullman
Writer & Director Stephen Poliakoff
Design Lez Brotherston
Lighting Oliver Fenwick
Sound & Music Ben and Max Ringham
Casting Andy Pryor
Assistant Director Laura Farnworth