Headlong season to feature Goold’s Pirandello adaptation

Published Wednesday 30 January 2008 at 17:20 by Miranda Bryant

Touring company Headlong’s second season under artistic director Rupert Goold will include modern adaptations of plays by Luigi Pirandello and Anton Chekhov.

The new season from Headlong, formerly known as the Oxford Stage Company, will start on May 7 at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre with The English Game by Richard Bean and directed by Sean Holmes, a play that examines the British psyche through the themes of cricket and racial politics.

This will be followed on June 5 by …Sisters, an adaptation of Chekhov’s classic Three Sisters, a collaboration with the Gate Theatre and the winner of the first the Gate/Headlong New Directions Award.

Goold, whose production of Macbeth picked up prizes for both best actor and director at last year’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards, will direct two of the four productions of Headlong’s forthcoming season.

Goold’s first production with Chichester Festival Theatre since Macbeth will premiere on June 28. The collaboration is a new version of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, adapted by the artistic director and Ben Power.

Meanwhile, the season will conclude with Shakespeare’s King Lear, starring Pete Postlethwaite.

It will be directed by Goold and performed at the Liverpool Everyman theatre to celebrate Liverpool as Capital of Culture 2008.