Charlotte Hope to star in BURIED CHILD

The New Group’s critically acclaimed Off-Broadway revival of Buried Child, directed by Scott Elliott, will transfer to Trafalgar Studios in London for a strictly limited season from 14 November – 18 February 2017, with press night on 1 December.

Buried Child is the next unmissable New Group production, presented by Lisa Matlin, and Adam Speers for Ambassador Theatre Group, to transfer to London following the huge success of Jesse Eisenberg’s play The Spoils in the West End, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kunal Nayyar and Alfie Allen.

Buried Child launched the career of one of America’s greatest living playwrights, Sam Shepard. The play was awarded both a Pulitzer Prize and an Obie Award in 1979, and was subsequently nominated for five Tony Awards following its revival on Broadway in 1996. After working with film star Ed Harris in the film The Right Stuff in 1983, Shepard wrote the role of Eddie in his play Fool for Love for Harris’ stage debut. Following that partnership, Buried Child is now the fifth of Shepard’s plays that Harris has performed in, including Cowboy Mouth, True West and Simpatico. Oscar nominee Amy Madigan plays the wife of real life husband Harris on stage for the second time, following The Jacksonian in 2013. They have also featured in ten films together, including Harris’ directorial debut Pollock in 2000, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. 

Set in rural America as it was reeling from a recession, the downturn of the agricultural industry and with a rising popularity in highly conservative candidates, the similarity of the political atmosphere in 1979 and 2016 is compelling, especially in the run up to the American Presidential Election in November. Casting a brutal light on disenfranchised Americans, Buried Child is a dark, macabre and painfully funny family drama that is as relevant now as it was during it’s first run almost 40 years ago.

Dodge (Harris) and Halie (Madigan) are barely hanging on to their farmland and their sanity while looking after their two wayward grown sons. When their grandson Vince (Irvine) arrives with his girlfriend Shelly (Hope), no one seems to recognize him, and confusion abounds.  As Vince tries to make sense of the chaos, the rest of the family dances around a deep, dark secret. This wildly poetic and cuttingly funny take on the American family drama gleefully pulls apart the threadbare deluded visions of our families and our homes.

Charlotte Hope (Shelly) will be making her West End debut in Buried Child, following A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. She most recently starred opposite Richard Gere and Peter Dinklage in Jon Avnet’s film Three Christs of Ypsilanti, and can next be seen in the Robert Zemeckis’s World War II action-romance Allied, with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, and in Amma Asante’s A United Kingdom. She is best known for her recurring role as ‘Myranda’ opposite Iwan Rheon as Ramsay Bolton in hit HBO series Game of Thrones. Other film credits include Testament Of Youth, The Theory of Everything, The Invisible Woman and Les Misérables.

Jack Fortune’s (Father Dewis) stage credits include Black Watch at the National Theatre of Scotland, and on international and UK tour, and King Lear at Bristol Old Vic. Jack’s screen credits include Critical, Route Irish, Above Suspicion - Silent Scream, Law and Order, The Appropriate Adult, Dunkirk, North Square, Judge John Deed, Serious and Organised and Sparkling Cyanide.

Barnaby Kay’s (Tilden) stage credits include Welcome Home, Captain Fox and A Streetcar Named Desire at the Donmar Warehouse, The Captain of Kopenick, Danton’s Death and Closer all at the National Theatre, The Real Thing at the Old Vic, Eric Larue, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Herbal Ben, The Changeling and A Jovial Crew for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Dying for It at the Almeida Theatre, Raving and War & Peace at Hampstead Theatre, King Charles III at the Wyndham’s Theatre, King of Prussia at Chichester Festival Theatre, Trust and Mouth to Mouth at the Royal Court Theatre, The Break of Day, Three Sisters, The Libertine and The Man of Mode all for Out of Joint, Macbeth at the Albery Theatre, Blues for Mister Charlie at the Tricycle Theatre, Arms & The Man on UK tour, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Brooklyn Academy. Barnaby’s screen credits include Treasure Island, Red Tails, Arn: The Knight Templar, AKA, Conspiracy, Eisenstein, Croupier, Shakespeare in Love, Oscar & Lucinda, The Man who Knew Too Little, Wallander, One Child, New Tricks, Frankie, Holby City, Midsomer Murders, Dead Boss, Public Enemies, Without You, Wuthering Heights, The Fixer, The Passion, Lifeline, The Government Inspector, Spooks, Prime Suspect IV, Serious & Organised, Silent Witness, Blonde Bombshell, The Bill, The Castle, Jonathan Creek, Cracker and The Vet.

Gary Shelford’s (Bradley) stage credits include Ross at Chichester Festival Theatre, The Orestia at Manchester Home, As You Like It and The Heresy Of Love both at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Ghost Stories at the Arts Theatre, The Good Person Of Sichuan and The Grapes of Wrath both at Mercury Theatre, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale & Henry V all for the Propeller Theatre Company, on world tour, The Stock Da’wa at Hampstead Theatre, Mad About The Boy at the National Theatre Studio and West Yorkshire Playhouse, The Shop at Bristol Old Vic, The Tin Horizon at Theatre 50, The Internationalist at The Gate Theatre, Shoot, Get Treasure, Repeat at The Gate/National Theatre, Angry Young Man at Trafalgar Studios, Present: Tense at Southwark Playhouse, Accidental Death of An Anarchist at Mercury Theatre, Animal Farm: One Man Show at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, and on world tour, 1 in 5 at Hampstead Theatre and Young Vic, Hamlet and Arabian Nights at Creation Theatre, Oxford, Who’s Harry? at Pleasance, London, The Triumph of Love at the Watermill Theatre, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Bloomsbury Theatre, Shades at the Albery Theatre, Asleep Under the Dark at the Cheltenham Everyman Theatre, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? at the Apollo Theatre, West End, Matches For Monkeys at Chelsea Theatre, Market Boy at the National Theatre Studio and No Man’s Land at the National Theatre. Gary’s screen credits include Luther, Silent Witness, Holby City, My Family, The Quatermass Experiment, Eastenders, Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, The Scampi Trail, Charlotte Gray, A Portrait Of London, and Slapper.

Buried Child tickets