This autumn Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company is proud to present the UK mainstage premiere of a play that is fast attaining the status of a modern classic, winning hearts, minds and awards across the world. BEAST ON THE MOON by Richard Kalinoski is an unconventional love story exploring the aftermath of one of the most barbaric chapters of twentieth-century history: the Armenian genocide, currently at the centre of a heated row between the United States and Turkey. The Playhouse’s Artistic Director Giles Croft helms this new production, starring Youssef Kerkour and Karine Bedrossian as the mismatched couple who must learn to embrace a New World, and Paul Greenwood (TV’s Rosie) as the enigmatic narrator whose own story proves to be closely entwined with theirs. The winner of Best Play awards in the USA, France and Argentina, BEAST ON THE MOON runs at Nottingham Playhouse from Friday 2 to Saturday 17 November (Box Office: 0115 941 9419 or www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk).
For events which unfolded around ninety years ago, the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey between 1915 and 1917 have become newsworthy as never before. Although journalist Robert Fisk named it "The Forgotten Holocaust" in a recent Independent feature, the campaign for recognition of the Armenian genocide gathers ever greater pace. The episode remains highly contentious in modern Turkey, with writers who argue that the killings constituted genocide – such as 2006 Nobel prizewinner Orhan Pamuk – facing imprisonment or the threat of imprisonment.
Outside Turkey, numerous nations have now passed resolutions asserting that this was indeed genocide. A new memorial to the Armenian dead is to be unveiled in Cardiff on Saturday 3 November following such a vote in the Welsh Assembly. Most recently, a resolution recognising the Armenian genocide has cleared the committee stage in the US House of Congress, despite a highly unusual presidential intervention: Bush fears damaging US relations with a crucial ally in the Iraq campaign, and indeed Turkey has already recalled its ambassador from Washington. The events whose disputed status is fuelling the current diplomatic row are precisely those which underlie Richard Kalinoski’s tender and intimate play.
An Armenian exile in 1920s Milwaukee, Aram is starting to make his way as a photographer. Yet his true focus remains the family ripped from him by the genocide in his native land. He pays to import a young Armenian girl as his bride, but Seta is not the girl whose photograph Aram was shown. Worse, the legacy of the traumas she has endured thwarts his desperate bid to reseed his family. There seems little hope for their marriage; it takes the intervention of an unlikely young stranger for this ill-starred couple to begin to overcome the Armenian nightmare and piece back together their American dream.
Not yet widely known in the UK, BEAST ON THE MOON has already achieved success around the globe, touching audiences in 12 languages and 17 different countries since its professional debut in 1995. Its long list of awards includes: the American Theatre Critics Association award for Best New Play by an Emerging Playwright; five awards including Best Play in Argentina’s ACE Awards in 2001; and the same year, five Molière awards in France including Best Play for Irina Brook’s production, previously presented at the Battersea Arts Centre, London.
A native of Racine, Wisconsin, Richard Kalinoski first discovered the theatre through taking a small role in King Lear during a summer study programme in Oxford, England. His play Lifeline, written while a Drama student, recounted the struggles of an Armenian immigrant woman; like BEAST ON THE MOON, it was informed by the family history of his sometime wife, Claudia. Richard Kalinoski is now Professor of Theater and Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (Oshkosh).
Paul Greenwood takes the twin roles of Vincent and the mysterious Gentleman who frames the action of BEAST ON THE MOON. Best remembered by TV audiences as the fresh-faced rookie policeman in the Roy Clarke sitcom Rosie and its predecessor The Growing Pains of PC Penrose, Paul has a distinguished theatrical CV on both sides of the Atlantic, including many RSC appearances. He also played Grandfather in the UK tour of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Playing the repressed and forbidding Aram, Youssef Kerkour has taken roles as diverse as Jack Kerouac, Achilles and Elvis Presley since beginning his acting career in 2000. Last year he appeared in Stephen Unwin’s production of Mother Courage with English Touring Theatre, and he has recently been seen on BBC TV in both Holby City and The Crusades. Lastly, the irrepressibly warm-hearted Seta is played by Karine Bedrossian, whose own mother tongue is Armenian. Karine’s stage work includes Stripped, Hole in the Heart and Essex Girls, while on TV she has featured in Life Begins and The Bill.
Giles Croft joined Nottingham Playhouse as Artistic Director in 1999 following posts as Literary Manager at the National Theatre and Artistic Director of both the Gate Theatre, London and the Palace Theatre, Watford. His productions for the Playhouse have included Polygraph, The Man Who, All Quiet on the Western Front and Sir Arnold Wesker’s Chicken Soup with Barley, which transferred to London’s Tricycle Theatre. Rat Pack Confidential won the City Life Award for Best Production as well as a West End run. Earlier this year Whisky Galore! The Making of a Fillum, Giles’ own adaptation of the Ealing film comedy, toured nationally while his production of I Have Been Here Before by J.B. Priestley was a significant hit with Nottingham audiences. He has longed to bring BEAST ON THE MOON to a wider UK audience after seeing the play at the BAC.
Following her last collaboration with Giles Croft on Chicken Soup with Barley, Designer Dawn Allsopp contributes a domestic set of great simplicity to BEAST ON THE MOON, eliding details as befits a memory play, but dominated by the picture of Aram’s lost family which so oppresses Seta. Lighting design is by James Farncombe, with Drew Baumohl as Sound Designer, Matt Bugg as Fight Director and Sally Hague as Accent Coach.
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