The Shakespeare Theatre Company today announced that it will be producing Harold Pinter’s Old Times at the Landsburgh Theatre May 17 – July 3, 2011. The Pinter play, which will feature Holly Twyford, will replace a previously-scheduled production of Luigi Pirandello’s Enrico IV.
The Theatre announced that it had cancelled Enrico because Patrick Page, who had been scheduled to play the title role, is unavailable on the scheduled dates.
Although the Shakespeare Theatre has never produced a Pinter play before, Artistic Director Michael Kahn is an enthusiast of Old Times. “I have wanted to produce this play for many years,” Kahn said. “I believe that Pinter’s work belongs in a theatre devoted to the classics because of his brilliant use of language.”
Old Times also offers the Shakespeare an opportunity to engage Twyford, who won a 2010 Helen Hayes Award as outstanding lead actress in a resident play for her performance in Signature Theatre’s The Little Dog Laughed. It was her third such award over the last twelve years. (She has been nominated twelve times during that period). “I knew Old Times was the play for [Twyford],” said Kahn, who will be directing the Pinter production.
Twyford, celebrated widely as a versatile actor, gets to demonstrate the point when she stars as Felicia, the tap dancing Pig, in Adventure Theatre’s If You Give a Pig a Pancake, directed by Jerry Whiddon, this summer: July 2 to August 15.
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Ditto. Amazed that theatres around here haven’t been doing more to celebrate Pinter’s legacy, and am glad that Studio and now Shakespeare have stepped up. Looking forward to this.
I was really looking forward to Enrico IV, but Michael directing Holly Twyford in Pinter is pretty nice too.