The Watermill have introduced the total solid of the brand-new stage adaption of Bill Bryson’s award-winning memoir Notes from a Small Island, affectionately celebrating the quirks and eccentricities of British life, tailored by BAFTA and Olivier Award successful playwright Tim Whitnall (Les Dawson: Flying High – UK Tour, Morecambe – West End, Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story – BBC4). Directed by The Watermill’s Artistic Director Paul Hart, designed by Katie Lias, and produced in affiliation with Simon Friend Entertainment, Notes from a Small Island kicks off the Newbury-based award-winning theatre’s spring season, and can star Olivier-nominated Mark Hadfield (Thérèse Raquin – Olivier, NT, Into the Woods – Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), as ‘Bill Bryson’.
Starring alongside Mark on this world premiere, taking part in from Friday 3 February to Saturday 18 March, are Bryony Corrigan (The Play That Goes Wrong – West End & Broadway, Magic Goes Wrong & Peter Pan Goes Wrong – West End), Wendy Nottingham (Vera Drake, Mr Selfridge, Peaky Blinders), Anne Odeke (As You Like It, The Merry Wives of Windsor & The Comedy of Errors – Shakespeare’s Globe), Steve Pinder (Brookside, C4, Wicked – UK and Ireland tour), Akshay Sharan (Jack Absolute Flies Again – National Theatre, 2018 Stage Debut Award for ‘Best Actor in a Play’ for The Reluctant Fundamentalist –Yard Theatre) and Hayden Wood (The Play That Goes Wrong & Doctor Who: Time Fracture – West End, Richard II – Arcola).
What makes us love this nation we name our personal?
From Calais to Scotland, Bill travels the size and breadth of Britain. Why does the nation that produced Marmite, Gardener’s Question Time and individuals who say “Ooh lovely” on the sight of a cup of tea, maintain such a particular place on this American’s coronary heart?
Notes from a Small Island spent three years within the Sunday Times bestsellers record, offered over two million copies and was voted on World Book Day by BBC Radio 4 listeners because the e-book that greatest represents our British identification.
With signature invention and creativeness, the manufacturing will embrace the total breadth and playfulnessof Bryson’s life affirming travelogue in The Watermill’s fittingly intimate, quintessentially rural area.