Full cast for Coming Clean at Trafalgar Studios announced
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Nicholas Ephram Ryan Daniels
Full casting has been announced for the King's Head Theatre's highly-anticipated revival of Kevin Elyot's Coming Clean, which is set to return to Trafalgar Studios on 8 January 2020 for a very limited engagement.
Newcomer Jonah Rzeskiewicz (front and centre) joins returning cast members of Coming Clean to play Robert in his West End debut.
Full casting announced for Coming Clean revival at Trafalgar Studios 2!
The King's Head Theatre together with RGM Productions and Making Productions have officially announced today (12 November 2019) full casting for the long-awaited return of Kevin Elyot's Coming Clean, which will run at Trafalgar Studios 2 in London's West End from 8 January until 1 February 2020.
Set to star in the revival production are returning cast members Lee Knight as Tony, Elliott Hadley as William / Jurgen, and Stanton Plummer-Cambridge as Greg. They will be joined by new cast member Jonah Rzeskiewicz, who will take on the role of Robert, formerly played by Tom Lambert in the 2019 West End run of Coming Clean.
About the 2020 West End cast of Coming Clean
Lee Knight's most notable theatre credits include Adam & Eve (Hope Theatre), A Very Very Very Dark Matter (The Bridge Theatre) and Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndham's Theatre, West End). His film credits include Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, Away With Me, The Spiritualist, The Doorman, and Misrule.
Elliot Hadley is perhaps best known for being an original cast member of the award-winning verbatim drama 5 Guys Chillin’, with which he embarked on both a UK and international tour (including a stop at New York’s Soho Playhouse). His role in the show earned him the Micheál Mac Liammóir Award for Best Male Performance. Other notable credits of his include the role of Alfred Cummins on Preston Passion (BBC) and Thomas Kyd in The Dead Shepherd as well as appearances in Dark Matters (Discovery Channel, USA), Far From The Madding Crowd with Carey Mulligan and Michael Sheen, and ITV's The Halcyon.
Stanton Plummer-Cambridge's stage credits include As You Like It (Shakespeare in the Squares), Macbeth and The Tempest (Southwark Playhouse), Queers (King’s Head Theatre), Richard III and Much Ado About Nothing (Handlebards Summer Tour). His screen credits include Black Earth Rising (BBC), Have We Met Before (BBC 4, BFI Born Digital Series), and The Durrells in Corfu (ITV).
Jonah Rzeskiewicz is a recent graduate of RADA and he will make both his professional London debut and his West End debut in Coming Clean. His prior theatre credits include the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre production of Edward II. He is set to appear on Netflix's The Dig and in Kenneth Branagh’s Death On The Nile next year in 2020.
About Kevin Elyot's first play Coming Clean — production history
Adam Spreadbury-Maher directed the 35th-anniversary production of Coming Clean in 2017 and the first London revival of the hit Kevin Elyot play, which recently enjoyed a West End transfer to London's Trafalgar Studios earlier this year. Coming Clean received its world premiere on 3 November 1982 at the Bush Theatre and marked Elyot's first-ever play.
In his foreword to Kevin Elyot: Four Plays (published in 2004 by Nick Hern Books), Elyot wrote, “From 1976 to 1984 I'd acted in several productions at the Bush Theatre, and Simon Stokes, one of the artistic directors, had casually suggested I try my hand at a play. I presented them with a script entitled Cosy, which was passed on to their literary manager Sebastian Born. He responded favourably and, largely through his support, it finally opened on 3 November 1982 under the [new] title Coming Clean.”
The play Coming Clean, which was written 12 years before Kevin Elyot's most famous play of all time — My Night With Reg, earned the playwright a Samuel Beckett Award for Writers Showing Particular Promise in the Field of the Performing Arts.
Coming Clean concept, themes and plot
Coming Clean explores the collapse of a gay couple’s relationship and dares to examine the complexities of love, fidelity, devotion, and openness. The setting of the play is a flat in Kentish Town in North London and the story takes place in 1982 in Margaret Thatcher's England. Tony is a "starving writer" who has been in a five-year relationship with Greg. They seem to make the perfect couple on the surface, but in reality, they are in an open relationship.
Mentally committed and in love, they are both open to cuckolding and having one-night stands with strangers — so long as this doesn't prove to be detrimental to their relationship. Eventually, Tony ends up wishing for a deeper connection — something like monogamy — and when he finds out that Greg has been having a full-fledged affair with their housekeeper Robert, the pair's differing attitudes towards love and commitment become all the more crystal clear.
A charming old review of Coming Clean
In 2014, theatre critic Michael Coveney wrote about Kevin Elyot in his obituary for The Guardian: “In writing about the human heart and the art of living... Elyot transcended categorisation and produced a small body of stage plays that will reward revival, and not just as period pieces.” Coveney went on to describe Coming Clean “an elegiac play about sexual relationships at a time when AIDS was still a barely credible rumour in Britain, but there was a sense of foreboding in the final scene.”
Coming Clean Trafalgar Studios creative team
Coming Clean is directed by Adam Spreadbury-Maher and features set design by Amanda Mascarenhas and lighting design by Nic Farman. The production is produced in the West End by the King’s Head Theatre, Making Productions and RGM Productions in association with DeVere Productions.
Coming Clean Trafalgar Studios tickets available from £24!
Don't miss the thrilling new revival of Coming Clean, which runs at Trafalgar Studios this January for just 28 performances only! The limited one-month run combined with the venue's limited seat capacity in Trafalgar Studios 2 means tickets are bound to be in high demand. Be sure to book your Coming Clean tickets early to secure the best seats whilst stocks last!