Daniel Evans
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Daniel Evans will return to Southwark’s Menier Chocolate Factory in a new production of Christopher Hampton’s first play, Total Eclipse. He will appear as 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud opposite Jamie Doyle’s Paul Verlaine. Performances begin at the Menier on 21 March. An official opening is set for 28 March.
Paul Miller directs this account of the passionate and volatile relationship between the two poets that has inspired generations of artists and writers from Picasso and T.S. Eliot to Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan. In the play, Verlaine is living with his young wife Mathilde in the oppressive atmosphere of her parents’ home when his life is turned upside down by the arrival of teenage prodigy Rimbaud. Seduced by Rimbaud’s brilliance and beauty, Verlaine abandons his conventional existence to live an extraordinary life unbound by rules or convention. But the explosive world in which the two men exist cannot last forever. Impoverished, transient and trapped in a destructive romantic triangle, something—or someone—has to give.
[AD]Evans joined the RSC before completing his drama school studies at Guildhall School of Speech and Drama, appearing in A Midsummer Nights Dream, that subsequently transferred to Broadway in 1996. He has since appeared regularly at the National, Donmar Warehouse and Royal Court, where his performance as Charlie Kringas in Merrily We Roll Along at the Donmar Warehouse in 2001 won him an Olivier Award in 2001. He previously starred at the Menier in 2005, in Sunday in the Park with George, which then transferred to the West End’s Wyndham’s Theatre in 2006. His performance in it again earned him an Olivier Award nomination.
Doyle has played opposite Frost/Nixon star Michael Sheen in The Last Journey of Byron on BBC Radio 4, and was Romeo in Romeo and Juliet at Birmingham REP among other stage and screen credits. He is a previous winner of South England Play Festival Best Actor Award, and is best known for the role of Jimmy in Channel 4’s hit series Shameless.
[AD]Hampton’s other original plays include Treats (being revived in February at the West End’s Garrick Theatre, with Billie Piper), Les Liaisons Dangereuses, When Did You Last See My Mother, The Philanthropist, Savages, Tales from Hollywood and The Talking Cure. He also co-wrote book and lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Sunset Boulevard and is currently represented in London by his new version of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, running at the Royal Court. Total Eclipse originally premiered at the Royal Court in 1968 and was last seen in London in 1981 when David Hare directed a cast that included Simon Callow at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Total Eclipse is booking at the Menier Chocolate Factory to 27 May.