Historic Day For Liverpool Theatre As The Playhouse Announces Its Rep Company.

The Liverpool Everyman has announced the 14 people who will form the Rep Company at the Hope Street venue next year. The Everyman will become home to a Company of actors from January to July, allowing the theatre to take a new approach to how work is created and seen. With a mix of local voices, renowned performers and emerging talent, directed by e&P’s three in-house directors, the Company will connect with the city’s communities while continuing to create inspirational and ground-breaking work on stage.

Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz said, “By having a Rep Company we’re creating a family that can really respond to the City, who will create a conversation with our audiences and will together create vibrant, vital work. There’s such a rich mix of experience and new talent, of performers from this city and those new to it, all of whom are extraordinary in their own way and I’m so excited to see them come together next year.”

Associate Director Nick Bagnall said, “Through an incredibly rigorous casting process I believe we have found a group of multi skilled and agile performers who will tell these beautiful stories with joy and an open heart. I cannot wait to see how the city responds to them and the tales we are about to tell together,”

The productions this season aim to speak to the City Region and create a powerful bond with audiences, so the Liverpool voice is also represented by experienced artists in the Company. Pauline Daniels has appeared at the Everyman many times and enjoys a unique connection with Liverpool audiences. Laura Dos Santos, who made her stage debut at the Everyman in The Morris at the Everyman and was highly acclaimed for her role in Educating Rita in the West End, makes a long-awaited return. Keddy Sutton who is hugely popular with audiences at the Royal Court and Unity Theatre in productions such as Mam I’m ‘Ere and Caz N Britney is at the Everyman for the first time since Ken Campbell’s Farting Around in Disguises. Liam Tobin, is well known to Hope Street audiences following appearances in Clybourne Park and When the Rain Stops Falling at Unity Theatre and Unsung at the Everyman. Local actress Zelina Rebeiro will make her Liverpool stage debut in the Company.

Youthful promise is very much to the fore in the Company season.  At a time when it is harder for young people to forge a theatre career, four young Liverpool artists will be doing so here; three making their professional debuts. 19-year-old actor Elliott Davis came through the theatre’s Young Everyman Playhouse (YEP) auditions to take up a training place in the Company funded by Everyman alumni.  Emily Hughes was selected from the hundreds of people who applied through open auditions this summer, while 2016 RADA graduate George Caple makes his Everyman debut. Recent graduate and LIPA Design Prize winner Molly Elizabeth Lacey Davies will be part of the design team for the season and will lead the design for Romeo and Juliet, whose cast will include YEP members alongside the Company.

A number of acclaimed actors will be returning to Liverpool to be part of the Company. Melanie La Barrie appeared in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 2004, one of Gemma Bodinetz’s first productions, while Richard Bremmer was last at the Everyman for Macbeth, the closing production of the old building in 2011. Dean Nolan made an instant connection with Liverpool audiences as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2015.

Some distinguished actors will take their first steps on the Everyman stage as part of the Company. Patrick Brennan, renowned for his work at the National Theatre and in ensembles at the RSC, makes his Everyman debut. He is joined by Tom Kanji, who has worked extensively at Shakespeare’s Globe, and Asha Kingsley who recently appeared in Coronation Street and The Queen and I at the Arcola.

All five productions in the season, Fiddler on the Roof, The Conquest of the South Pole, The Story Giant, The Sum and Romeo and Juliet, will be directed by e&P’s in-house directors, Gemma Bodinetz, Nick Bagnall and YEP Director Matt Rutter. The three-person design team of Michael Vale, Jocelyn Meall and Molly Elizabeth Lacey Davies have created all five productions to be performed in the round to give a festival feel.

The Company will come together for the first time on Tuesday 3rd January as rehearsals begin for the Company season.