The Stage

Flannery adapts Oscar winner for the National

Published Wednesday 6 August 2008 at 15:20 by Matthew Hemley

Exclusive: Our Friends in the North creator Peter Flannery is penning his first play in three years, with a production for the National Theatre based on an Oscar-winning Russian film.

The new show is an adaptation of Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun and will run at the National in spring 2009.

It is set in Russia in 1936 and has been described as a portrayal of the viciousness and betrayal that existed during Stalin’s dictatorship.

Rehearsals are due to begin towards the end of this year, with Olivier Award-winning Howard Davies, an associate director of the National whose other credits include All My Sons and Her Naked Skin, at the production’s helm.

The play marks Flannery’s first theatre production since 2005, when he wrote an adaptation of Zola’s Therese Raquin called The Bodies for the Live Theatre in Newcastle.

A former writer in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company, his other theatre credits include Singer, which starred Antony Sher, and Our Friends in the North, which was adapted for TV and screened on the BBC in 1996.

Flannery, whose latest television project The Devil’s Whore will be broadcast on Channel 4 later this year, told The Stage he was excited to be writing for the theatre again.

He said no casting decisions had yet been made about the production, but revealed the play had aroused interest in several high-profile actors keen to appear in it. A spokeswoman for the National confirmed the show was lined up for production at the venue but declined to reveal more details.