Spacey enlists Hall, Warchus and Page for Old Vic

Published Tuesday 9 May 2006 at 12:45 by Alistair Smith

Kevin Spacey has called in a trio of leading directors to provide him with “creative counsel” and help develop the Old Vic Theatre Company.

Edward Hall, artistic associate at Newbury’s Watermill Theatre and son of Peter Hall who ran the venue for a season in 1997, Matthew Warchus, who directed West End hit Art, and former Royal Court artistic director Anthony Page have been announced as associates of the Waterloo venue, as of next season.

Spacey, who has recently come in for heavy criticism over his choice of productions at the Old Vic, commented: “I’m delighted that we will be joined by three talented and experienced associates. Ed, Anthony and Matthew each bring very special qualities and great theatrical wisdom.”

As part of the 2006/7 season, Hall will direct his all-male company Propeller in two Shakespeare comedies - The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night. The productions will follow A Moon for the Misbegotten, which will reunite director Howard Davies with Spacey on their first project together since O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. The season will be completed by Robert Lindsay starring in John Osborne’s The Entertainer, directed by Sean Holmes.

Spacey said that he believed the season was “in The Old Vic tradition of celebrating great acting, big plays and a sense of event.” He added: “It will be an enormous pleasure for audiences to see Robert Lindsay as Archie Rice in The Entertainer, a part he was surely born to play. A household name on television, he appears all too rarely on stage.

“Having done Long Day’s Journey into Night I’ve always wanted to play Jim in Moon, and I feel blessed to be reunited with my good friend Howard Davies. And we’re bringing more Shakespeare to the Old Vic. Edward Hall shares our ambition to present Shakespeare with clarity and invention and we believe his approach to staging these plays will appeal to the widest possible audience.”

Looking beyond next season, Stephen Fry, who Spacey described as “an exceptional talent, a very funny man” will write a new version of the pantomime Cinderella, and Warchus will direct Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy The Norman Conquests. The company is also planning to produce two new works that have been developed through its Old Vic New Voices programme. The first, entitled Bette and Joan and written by Malcolm McKay, tells the story of the relationship between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The second, which has the working title Londoners, is set in the golden era of music hall and has been created by Di Trevis, with Frank McGuinness credited as a co-writer.

Spacey also confirmed that he and Trevor Nunn will work together again, following their successful collaboration on Richard II, as part of his fourth season as artistic director of the venue, and that the pair are currently choosing from among a number of projects they might wish to stage.