Casting announced for Live Theatre's new 'razor-sharp' two-hander
Plum roles in Stephenson play
Casting has been announced for Shelagh Stephenson’s eagerly awaited new play at Live Theatre in Newcastle.
In Astell & Woolf, which imagines a meeting in the afterlife between Newcastle feminist Mary Astell and novelist Virginia Woolf, Phillippa Wilson will play Astell opposite Tessa Parr’s Woolf.
Clearly they’re plum roles so their delight is understandable.
“I’m over the moon to be cast as Mary Astell in this wonderful, important, hilarious new play by Shelagh Stephenson, playing such as iconic, under-celebrated woman,” said Phillippa.
“Often the women in our history are forgotten and it’s great to see that the first feminist from Newcastle is finally being recognised in her own right and coming to life on the Live Theatre stage.”
Tessa, who was born in Otley, said: “Traynor’s direction paired with Stephenson’s writing is a match made in heaven. As an audience, what’s not to be excited about?”
That’s Karen Traynor, the North East actor and director, who is well placed to give a hint of what we might expect when the play opens on May 14.
“Tessa and Phillippa are an excellent partnership and bring both gravitas and a lightness of touch to these erudite women,” she said.
“Shelagh’s well-crafted dialogue zips along, allowing them to play out their intellectual sparring – sometimes funny, sometimes ferocious.”
What do we know of these real-life characters?
Astell (1666 to 1731) was the daughter of a Newcastle coal merchant who, in her Reflections on Marriage, published in 1666, posed the question: “If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?”
There’s a plaque commemorating her on the boundary wall of Newcastle Cathedral, formerly St Nicholas’ Church whose library she used when being taught by her uncle, the Rev Ralph Astell, in lieu of a formal education.
Virginia Woolf (1882 to 1941), a Londoner, is remembered as a leading light in the so-called Bloomsbury Group of writers, artists and intellectuals, and as the author – among much else - of A Room of One’s Own, in which she explained how women had always lacked creative space.
Shelagh Stephenson, whose last play for Live Theatre was Harriet Martineau Dreams of Dancing in 2016, has dreamt up a scenario in which these two ostensibly like-minded women from different eras have time to chat.
“Packed with jokes and fierce feminist fire, in Astell & Woolf the action unfolds in the afterlife where the two radical women bide their time,” we are told.
“Between them, armed with sharp tongues and several bottles of sherry, they confront life, God, art, the patriarchy and gradually find their route towards salvation.”
Phillippa Wilson, born in York but long based in North Tyneside, has performed at Live Theatre many times, starting her professional career there in 1989 and appearing in plays including Bandits, Twelve Tales of Tyneside, The Pitmen Painters and, most recently, Shuggy Boats.
Tessa Parr’s theatre credits include Unexpected Item in the Bagging Area (at Arc, Stockton), As You Like It (The Globe, London), several roles across the north of England and, at Live Theatre, The Soaking of Vera Shrimp.
Her solo show, I AM JOHNNY, is due to premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.
Plays by Shelagh Stephenson, who is originally from Whitley Bay and began her theatre career as an actor, include The Memory of Water, An Experiment with an Air Pump and A Northern Odyssey, about the artist Winslow Homer, which premiered at Live Theatre in 2010.
Astell and Woolf will run from Thursday, May 14 until Saturday, June 6. To book, go to the Live Theatre website.