DESOLATE HEAVEN Cast Announced at Theatre 503

Paul Robinson has announced the full cast for his first production as sole Artistic Director of Battersea's Theatre503. Tony Award-winning actress Brid Brennan will star in Desolate Heaven, the world premiere by Irish writer Ailís Ní Ríain. She is joined by Evelyn Lockley and Carla Langley, who both make their professional debuts in this love story between two young girls, who burdened with unnatural responsibilities, run away together. It will run at Theatre503, above the Latchmere Pub in Battersea, from 5 February to 2 March 2013.

Brid Brennan's stage credits include the original production of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, for which she won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. She also appeared in Rutherford and Son at The National Theatre and The Little Foxes at the Donmar, both of which earned her Olivier Award nominations. In 2010 she appeared in Philadelphia, Here I Come! at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, directed by Dominic Dromgoole.

Born in the Irish Republic, Ailís Ní Ríain is a prize-winning classical composer. She recently won the Tom Erhardt Peggy Ramsay Award for ground-breaking new work and her music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 'The Verb' & 'Hear and Now', BBC 4′s The Today Programme and Woman's Hour, RTÉ Lyric FM and RTÉ One. Desolate Heaven will be her first full-length high profile production.

James Perkins will join the production team as designer. James' recent credits include The Only History of Lizzie Finn and Floyd Collins (Southwark Playhouse) and The Girl in the Yellow Dress (Theatre503 and Salisbury Playhouse). Fresh from both the Royal Court and West End productions of Constellations Lee Curren will be Lighting Designer and Simon Slater is sound designer.

Paul Robinson has been Joint-Artistic Director of the 60 seat new writing venue in Battersea since 2006, before becoming sole Artistic Director in 2012. Theatre503 has built a strong reputation for staging plays by first time writers, launching the careers of playwrights such as Dennis Kelly and Alice Birch. In 2009 it became the smallest venue in the UK to receive an Olivier Award for Katori Hall's The Mountaintop, which successfully transferred to the West End and Broadway.

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