The Young America Season Opens in October at the Royal & Derngate Theatre

By: Aug. 13, 2009
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Never before seen outside the US, Spring Storm will mark the European Premiere of Tennessee Williams' tragic drama that prefigures his later works, Streetcar Named Desire and A Glass Menagerie. Eugene O'Neill's first full length play, Beyond the Horizon won the Pulitzer Prize for drama when he was only 32 and marks the author's first major success as a playwright. Both are part of the Young America Season at Royal & Derngate, Northampton which opens on October 9th and follows the critically acclaimed Ayckbourn at 70 Season this summer.

Beyond the Horizon, by Eugene O'Neill, is considered by many to be the first modern American tragedy, paving the way for the poetic realism of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Edward Albee. This was the first of O'Neill's plays to be professionally produced, and a sensation on Broadway when first produced in 1920. It enjoyed a successful run in the West End, but has been largely forgotten since. A tale of two brothers who love the same woman, this is a powerful story of youthful dreams crashing into reality and the human spirit being tested almost beyond endurance.

Performed in rotation with Beyond the Horizon, by the same company of actors, Tennessee Williams' Spring Storm was written when he was a playwriting student at Iowa University, and was re-discovered among his papers in 1999. Set in a Mississippi town full of small-minded gossips and young people brimming with life, it follows the tale of the beautiful and charming Heavenly and her host of young male admirers. When forced to make a decision between her handsome and wild lover, Dick, and the seemingly respectable and sensitive Arthur, the consequences of her actions threaten to tear their lives apart.

Laurie Sansom, Artistic Director of the Royal & Derngate, directs the season. The young cast includes Liz White, whose TV roles include Life on Mars and Mike Leigh's film Vera Drake, Michael Mullarkey who graduated from LAMDA in 2008 and will be making his professional debut and Michael Thomson whose theatre work includes Cameron in J. M. Barrie's Mary Rose (Nottingham Playhouse) and Toby Cole in David Hare's Amy's View (Salisbury Playhouse).

For more information about events in Royal & Derngate's Young America Season or to book, visit the website at www.royalandderngate.co.uk or call the Box Office on 01604 624811.



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