Full company announced for ECLIPSE at Chichester Festival Theatre

Seamus Ryan/Bob King Creative

Eclipse, written and directed by John Morton (W1A, Twenty Twenty Six) receives its world premiere at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre from 8 May – 6 June. Joining the previously announced Sarah Parish and Rupert Penry-Jones in the company are Katharine Bennett-Fox, Selina Cadell, Mariam Haque, Brendan Hooper, Lizzie Hopley, Julian Protheroe, Maanuv Thiara and Paul Thornley. 

In the kitchen of an old Devon rectory, the daughter who stayed and the son who moved  away make conversation with their current and former partners, the milkman, the postman,  the care workers. They talk about the weather, the roads, the toaster, the bins. About  anything except the simmering tensions between them, as their father lies mortally ill in the  next room. Until the unspoken emotions and conflicts of years boil over. 

Eclipse is a painfully funny, acute and delicate play about our struggle to communicate, in the face of life and of death. And our infinite capacity for drinking tea. 

Writer and director John Morton’s award-winning TV series include People Like Us, Twenty Twelve, W1A and the forthcoming Twenty Twenty Six in the run-up to the World Cup; this is  his first stage play.  

The company is led by Sarah Parish, whose recent TV credits include W1A, Piglets, Industry and Bancroft and who last appeared at CFT in Way Upstream; and Rupert Penry-Jones, returning to the stage after many screen series including Spooks, Silk, Whitechapel, The Strain and The Feud. 

Selina Cadell’s distinguished career includes TV’s long-running Doc Martin and recently, on stage, The Deep Blue Sea and The Tempest (West End). Paul Thornley’s theatre credits include Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London and New York, Dear England and  London Road at the National Theatre. 

Eclipse will be designed by Simon Higlett, with lighting design by Emma Chapman, sound  design by Ed Clarke, and movement by Mike Ashcroft; the casting director is Matilda James CDG, and the associate director is Fiona Dunn. 

Eclipse was originally commissioned and developed by ROYO, in association with Wessex Grove.

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