Manchester-born Lyndsey Marshal – who starred on the big screen alongside Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman in director Stephen Daldry’s The Hours in 2002 – takes the leading role of Clytemnestra in Blanche McIntyre’s take on The Oresteia, Ted Hughes’ translation of Aeschylus’ epic drama about war, bloodshed, revenge, and justice.
First performed in 458BC, The Oresteia runs between Fri 23 Oct – Sat 14 Nov 2015. The six-strong cast, with actors playing multiple roles crossing age and gender, will be accompanied by a chorus of more than 50 Greater Manchester residents at each performance, including 16 Manchester Metropolitan University drama students, who make up the Ensemble Chorus.
Lyndsey won the prestigious Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer in 2001, and was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award the following year. After 15 years working in TV and film, as well as appearing in a number of productions at the National Theatre, The Oresteia is Lyndsey’s first stage appearance in her home city. She will appear in the cinema in 2016 in major British crime drama Trespass Against Us, starring alongside Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson, and Rory Kinnear, and recently completed From Darkness, a four-part drama series for BBC1 which filmed in Manchester, with Anne Marie Duff and Johnny Harris.
Bolton-based Simon Trinder, who stars this autumn alongside Anna Maxwell Martin and David Threlfall in ITV’s three-part blockbuster drama Midwinter of the Spirit, is Orestes. A veteran of over 50 plays for BBC Radio 4, Simon has credits at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court Theatre, the Hampstead Theatre, and the Young Vic. Regionally, he played Caliban opposite Pete Postlethwaite’s Prospero in The Tempest at the Royal Exchange Theatre in 2007 directed by Greg Hersov, and Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Bristol Old Vic in 2005.
Playing Agamemnon, Electra, and Apollo, Gary Shelford has a whole host of theatre credits including As You Like It, The Heresy Of Love (both at Shakespeare’s Globe), and Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale and Henry V (all for the Propeller Theatre Company. His TV appearances include Luther, Silent Witness, Holby City, My Family, The Quatermass Experiment (live), and EastEnders. His film credits include Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Charlotte Gray, A Portrait of London, directed by Mike Figgis, and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Slapper.
Hedydd Dylan, playing Cassandra, Athene, the Watchman and the Nurse, graduated from RADA in 2008. She has worked recently at the Royal Shakespeare Company, with credits in Oppenheimer, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hedydd is an Associate Actor at Theatr Clwyd in Mold.
Daniel Millar takes on the roles of Leader of the Male Chorus and the Servant. His TV credits include roles in Psychoville, EastEnders, Holby City, Grownups, and Doctors (BBC). On stage, he has appeared in productions of King Lear, Edward II, Frankenstein, The White Guard, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the National Theatre, and in The Winter’s Tale for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Playing the Leader of the Female Chorus is Ronkẹ Adekoluejo. A RADA graduate in 2013, she has since appeared in Pride and Prejudice (Sheffield Crucible), and The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and The House That Will Not Stand (both Tricycle Theatre). Immediately after The Oresteia, she is going to India and the United States to play Olivia in Twelfth Night, directed by Sean Holmes for Filter Theatre Company.
Winner of the TMA Best Director award in 2013 for directing The Seagull for Headlong and the Critics’ Circle Most Promising Newcomer award in 2011, Blanche McIntyre is regarded as one of the brightest young directors working in British theatre.
“The Oresteia is epic in its themes, experimental in style and contemporary in its impact,” says Blanche, “and in the current situation of increased political engagement and in the context of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ proposals, it feels right to work on a play in which the right to administer justice is transferred from a small family to the people. It seems even more appropriate to be doing this in Manchester in 2015, a great city with a long, noble, and continuing history of agitation for the greater good.”