We’re excited to announce that Finn Cole, star of Peaky Blinders and Animal Kingdom, will play Ray in Lucas Hnath’s Red Speedo at the OT this summer. Matthew Dunster directs this UK premiere, fresh from his West End hit productions of Shirley Valentine, 2.22: A Ghost Story and Hangmen.
Lucas Hnath is one of America’s most exciting new playwrights, whose Tony Award nominated A Doll’s House Part 2 was seen at the Donmar Warehouse.
Ray lives to swim. He is within touching distance of international glory and a life-changing sponsorship deal. But everything changes when performance-enhancing drugs are discovered in the club’s refrigerator. As tensions run high, Ray’s brother wants them destroyed, his coach wants to call the authorities, his ex-girlfriend doesn’t want to know, and Ray wants the drugs back.
A thriller played at the breakneck pace of an Olympic sprint, Red Speedo tackles the unforgiving weight of success in a world where the only crime is getting caught.
“One of the brightest new voices of his generation” The New York Times on Lucas Hnath
“Formal rigour, propulsive momentum, the sense that there’s a lot happening beneath the surface” The Guardian on Red Speedo
A co-production with David Adkin
Finn Cole makes his professional stage debut as Ray. His television credits include Peaky Blinders (as series regular Michael Gray), An Inspector Calls and Animal Kingdom. For film his credits include Slaughterhouse Rulez, Dreamland, Here Are The Young Men, F9 and Locked In, and the forthcoming Last Breath.
Lucas Hnath is an award-winning playwright whose other plays include A Doll’s House, Part 2 (South Coast Repertory and Broadway); The Christians (Humana Festival); A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney (Soho Rep); nightnight (Humana Festival); Isaac’s Eye (Ensemble Studio Theatre) and Death Tax (Humana Festival, Royal Court Theatre). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2015 Whiting Award, a Whitfield Cook Award, two Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citations and a Windham Campbell Prize for Drama.
Matthew Dunster’s directing credits include Shirley Valentine (Duke of York’s Theatre); 2:22 A Ghost Story (Apollo Theatre); True West (Vaudeville Theatre); Oedipus (Bunkamura Theatre); Hangmen (Royal Court Theatre, Golden Theatre); Liberian Girl (Royal Court Theatre); The Seagull, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Love’s Sacrifice (RSC); The Lightning Child, Doctor Faustus (Shakespeare’s Globe); The Love Girl and The Innocent, You Can Still Make a Killing (Southwark Playhouse); Mametz (National Theatre Wales); Before the Party (Almeida Theatre); A Sacred Flame (ETT); Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Royal Exchange Manchester); Mogadishu (Royal Exchange Manchester and Lyric Hammersmith); The Most Incredible Thing (Sadler’s Wells) and The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Royal & Derngate, Northampton). His writing credits include Children’s Children (Almeida Theatre); You Can See the Hills and Two Clouds Over Eden (Royal Exchange Manchester).
More casting to be announced…
