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Orange concentrate
Dates are out for Blue/Orange at The Crucible in Sheffield. Kathy is directing the play from 2 to 26 February. You can find out more and book tickets on the theatre’s website. Set in a London psychiatric hospital. Christopher claims he is the son of the late Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin and that oranges are blue. Set against the backdrop of a crumbling National Health Service, this edgy comedy examines the unspoken politics of institutions, challenges assumptions about ‘normality’ and questions whether ‘sanity’ is dependent on the colour of your skin.
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Love bites
Kathy is directing the new play by Nick Stafford, Love Me Tonight, at the Hampstead Theatre, London from 21 October to 20 November. Starring Amanda Abbington, Linda Bassett, Hugh Ross and Nicolas Tennant, the play is about a family trying to find lost love with one another after the funeral of its youngest son. For more information and to buy tickets, go to the Hampstead Theatre’s website here. To promote the play, Kathy has embarked on another press tour and a new piece by the Telegraph has been added to the media section in which she reveals that the acting bug has still to bite her, years after she gave it up to concentrate…
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My acting days are over
Kathy Burke had it all as an actress – critical acclaim, a top award at Cannes, and a place in the nation’s heart as Waynetta Slob. But now she has found a new passion, she tells Jasper Rees The Daily Telegraph Kathy Burke was, for a period in the 1990s, a sort of cockney working-class Judi Dench. Straddling the broad comedy of the television sketch show Harry Enfield and Chums and the unflinching realism of Gary Oldman’s movie Nil By Mouth, for which she won a best actress award at Cannes in 1997, she was one of those much loved performers everyone got used to always being around. When an…
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Going mental
Kathy is to direct the regional premiere of psychiatric drama Blue/Orange at the Sheffield Crucible in the New Year. The play, by Joe Penhall, is set in a London mental hospital, and stars an enigmatic patient who claims to be the son of exiled African dictator Idi Amin. As the play progresses, this apparent delusion becomes unnervingly plausible. It’s an incendiary tale about race and madness and has won three awards for Best Play since it was first aired in London in 2000 – the Olivier Award, Critics’ Circle award and Evening Standard award.
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Back to her roots
Media section updated with an interesting interview with Kathy about The Quare Fellow and her approach to directing, posted on the York Theatre Royal website. Plus an Observer piece written by Kathy herself about the project got off the ground (note the imaginative subs who used the same headline “Kathy comes home” as an Observer feature almost exactly two years ago).
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Kathy comes home
The Observer When I first decided to take off the tap shoes and concentrate on theatre directing, Dominic Dromgoole got in touch to ask if I’d like to do something with Oxford Stage Company. My reaction was negative. What I enjoy most about directing is the chance of working things out with the writer, plus I need their approval and I like the chat. I didn’t want to work on dry, old plays written by the dry, old dead. Luckily for me, he ignored my ignorance, phoned back a year later and said: ‘What about The Quare Fellow by Brendan Behan? It’s not been done for 20 years, bit neglected.…
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Kathy Burke and her quare fellow
Kathy Burke is one of our most popular actresses. Winner of the Best Actress Award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for Gary Oldman’s lacerating Nil by Mouth, regular nominee and award winner in the TV comedy stakes, she could by now be pulling in the mega-bucks. She also taught me, “don’t just be involved as an actor in this business. Try and branch out and understand the other side of things”.’ Instead, here she is on a grey January evening, sitting in the bare dressing room of London’s famous Old Vic Theatre, solemn-faced, chain-smoking – a far cry from her larger-than-life comic creations – love-lorn Linda of Gimme Gimme…
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Happy anniversary
Kathy is touring the country with her direction of Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow. Starting at the Liverpool Playhouse on 12 February and ending at the Tricycle Theatre in London on 8 May, it is a 50th anniversary production of Behan’s classic comedy-drama. Set in an Irish prison, the play follows the inmates, wardens and the quare fellow as his hour approaches. Performed by the Oxford Stage Company, it is the first time in 20 years that this masterpiece has been on the stage. Full details below. Click on the theatre website for more details and to buy tickets online: 12-21 Feb Liverpool Playhouse 0151 709 4776 www.everymanplayhouse.com 24-28 Feb Oldham Coliseum 0161…
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Live!
KathyBurke.co.uk goes live on the Internet, featuring a biography of Kathy plus a comprehensive run down of her career so far plus links to articles written about her and several interviews available to listen to online.
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Born bad beckons
Kathy’s latest play, Born Bad, opens at the Hampstead Theatre. Written by Debbie Tucker Green, Born Bad is an intense play centering on a black family forced to confront one sister’s nasty secret over the course of an evening. Described by The Guardian as equivalent to swallowing a “scalding cup of triple espresso in one gulp”. Stars Jenny Jules, Nadine Marshall, Alibe Parsons, Nicholas Pinnock, Ewart James Walters and Sharlene Whyte.
