Manchester actor Chris Jack stars in gang war play ‘Brighton Rock’ at The Lowry
Brighton Rock co-commissioned by Week 53 festival
Tue 22 – Sat 26 May
Manchester Actor Chris Jack will star in a new adaption of Brighton Rock as part of The Lowry’s Week 53 festival Tue 22 – Sat 26 May.
Tony-Award Nominee Bryony Lavery’s new adaptation of Graham Greene’siconic 1938 novel of sin and redemption Brighton Rock, follows two seventeen year olds Pinkie and Rose as they become involved in a vicious gang war.
Directed by Pilot Theatre’s new artistic director Esther Richardson and featuring a soundtrack composed by the acclaimed singer, musician and composer Hannah Peel, Brighton Rock will take audiences on a path where one brutal murder leads to the next. The police are impassive – but the courageous and life embracing Ida Arnold wants the truth. Nothing scares her. Whatever the cost, she’ll see justice is done.
Written in 1938, Graham Greene’s classic novel of good and evil was first adapted for the stage at the Garrick Theatre with Richard Attenborough playing Pinkie, a role he resumed in the iconic 1947 film version. In 2010 Greene’s novel was remade, setting it in 1964, with Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough and Helen Mirren. In 1993 Vicky Featherstone directed David Hurlock’s stage adaptation of the novel at West Yorkshire Playhouse and in 2004 John Barry and Don Black wrote a musical version which ran at the Almeida Theatre
Bryony Lavery is a playwright whose play Frozen, commissioned by Birmingham Repertory Theatre, won the TMA Best Play Award and was then produced on Broadway where it was nominated for four Tony Awards. Fitting the Week 53 festival theme of ‘coming of age’ she said about her new adaptation, “In the poisoned relationship between Pinkie and Rose, there is one of the best accounts ever of what it is like to be 16 and 17 years’ old in a terrible, violent, adolescence.”
Brighton Rock is designed by Sara Perks (American Idiot, Arts Theatre and Sweeny Todd, Mercury Theatre) with lighting by Aideene Malone (Peter Pan and Jane Eyre, National Theatre). The production will feature a specially composed soundtrack by the Northern Irish artist, singer and electronic composer and member of The Magnetic North, Hannah Peel.
Brighton Rock is co-commissioned by The Lowry for Week 53 festival and presented by special arrangement with STUDIOCANAL
There will be a limited allocation of Pay What You Decide tickets for all Week 53 productions, more details to be announced
Listings Information
Brighton Rock
Date: Tue 22 – Sat 26 May
Time: 7.30pm. Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Tickets: £20. PWYD limited capacity