Matthew McFadyen to Star in Royal Court's The Pain and The Itch
The Pain and The Itch by Bruce Norris, the first play to be directed by the Royal Court’s new Artistic Director Dominic Cooke since his appointment, is set to open in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs on 21 June, following previews from 14 June. Matthew MacFadyen heads the cast in the role of Clay.
U.S. playwright Norris’ new comedy opens on a cosy family Thanksgiving dinner for six. Someone—or something—is leaving bite marks in the avocados. Clay and Kelly’s daughter Kayla has an itch, and Carol can’t remember who played Gandhi. From this peculiar domestic scenario develops a social satire of phoney liberal values.
The play marks MacFadyen’s first appearance in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, although he featured in the Royal Court’s Look Back: 50 Readings season there last year, in Christopher Hampton’s Total Eclipse. His other stage credits include Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 and Battle Royal, both at the National, Much Ado About Nothing for Cheek by Jowl and A School for Scandal with the RSC. On film and TV, he starred as Tom in three series of Spooks, and played Mr. Darcy in the recent film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
Norris is a playwright and actor. He has an ongoing collaboration with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, where several of his plays—
The Pain and the Itch, We All Went Down to Amsterdam, The Infidel, The Unmentionables and
Purple Heart—were commissioned and produced. As an actor, Norris has appeared on the Steppenwolf stage in
Closer, as well as on screen in films including
School of Rock and
The Sixth Sense.
The Pain and the Itch premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre in 2006 before a sold-out run off-Broadway at Playwright’s Horizon. It runs at the Jerwood Theatre downstairs to 21 July.