The Donmar Warehouse announces that Ron Cook will complete full casting in Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, joining previously announced cast Stephen Dillane and Gina McKee. Faith Healer is directed by Lyndsey Turner, who returns to the Donmar following her acclaimed productions of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! and Fathers and Sons. Award-winning Designer Es Devlin joins the creative team, her first time designing at the Donmar, alongside Costume Designer Jack Galloway, Lighting Designer Bruno Poet, Sound Designer Christopher Shutt and Composer Rupert Cross.
Throughout the remote and forgotten corners of the British Isles, Frank Hardy offers the promise of redemption to the sick and the suffering. But his is an unreliable gift, a dangerous calling which brings him into conflict with his wife Grace and his manager Teddy. Their accounts of their lives together and their memories of the past collide as they attempt to understand the power which lies at the heart of Frank’s ministry.
Brian Friel (Writer, 1929 – 2015) is considered one of the greatest Irish dramatists, having written over 30 plays across six decades. He is best known for plays such as Translations, Philadelphia, Here I Come! and Dancing with Lughnasa, which won Best Play at the Tony Awards, Olivier Awards and New York Drama Critics Circle. Friel co-founded Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 with actor Stephen Rea where they staged Translations which went on to win the Ewart-Biggs Peace Prize. In the late 1990s Friel wrote a number of adaptations of the work of Chekhov, Ibsen and Turgenev.
Ron Cook (Teddy) returns to the Donmar after appearing in Trelawny of the Wells, Richard II, King Lear (also UK Tour and Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York), Hamlet, Twelfth Night (Wyndham’s), Juno and the Paycock and Glengarry Glen Ross. His extensive theatre credits include The Homecoming and The Ruling Class (Trafalgar Studios), Henry V (Noel Coward), The Seafarer (National) and Our Country’s Good (Royal Court). TV credits include four series of Mr Selfridge (ITV), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (BBC), Bert and Dickie (BBC), Vera (ITV) and Little Dorrit (BBC). Film credits include Hot Fuzz, On a Clear Day, 24 Hour Party People, Charlotte Gray, Chocolat, Topsy Turvy and Secrets and Lies.
Stephen Dillane (Frank) returns to the Donmar following his acclaimed performance in Katie Mitchell’s 1996 production of Beckett’s Endgame, TS Eliot’s Four Quartets in 2009, and Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, which transferred to the Albery Theatre and Broadway, winning him a Tony Award. Other theatre credits include The Master Builder, Macbeth (Almeida), Drunk Enough To Say I Love You?, Our Late Night and Hush (Royal Court), Uncle Vanya (Young Vic), Hamlet (Gielgud), The Coast of Utopia, Dancing at Lughnasa, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and Angels in America (National). Film work includes The Hours and Welcome to Sarajevo. On television he played the roles of Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones and Thomas Jefferson in the HBO series John Adams , and Karl Roebuck in The Tunnel for which he won an International Emmy Award for Best Actor in 2014. In 2009 he won the Best Actor BAFTA Television Award for his role as Anthony Hurndall in The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall.
Gina McKee (Grace) returns to the Donmar following her performances in King Lear (also UK Tour and Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York), Ivanov (Wyndham’s) and in Old Times. Her work on stage includes The Mother (The Ustinov, Bath), Richard III (Trafalgar Studios), Di and Viv and Rose (Hampstead), Separate Tables (Chichester Festival Theatre), and Aristocrats (National). Film work includes Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop, Atonement, Scenes of a Sexual Nature and Notting Hill. Gina’s extensive television roles include Caterina Sforza in the Showtime series The Borgias and Mary Cox in the BBC’s Our Friends in the North. Other television credits include Hebburn (BBC), Secret State (Channel 4), Line of Duty (BBC), Vera (ITV), Waking The Dead (BBC), The Old Curiosity Shop (ITV), and The Forsyte Saga (ITV).
www.donmarwarehouse.com
