Opening Night Report from the Playhouse Theatre in the West End
Visit Whatsonstage for photos from the opening night
Following the last-minute cancellation of its New York premiere, Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner’s triple Whatsonstage.com Award-winning My Name Is Rachel Corrie – the one-woman play based on the writings of the late Rachel Corrie, played by Megan Dodds – received its West End premiere at the Playhouse Theatre last night.
Why did a 23-year-old woman leave her comfortable American life to stand between a bulldozer and a Palestinian home? My Name Is Rachel Corrie recounts the real story of “the short life and sudden death of Rachel Corrie, and the words she left behind.”
Rickman took the idea to the Royal Court after reading emails written by Corrie and posthumously published in the Guardian. With the permission of Corrie’s family, he and Guardian journalist Katharine Viner developed the 80-minute monologue based on Corrie’s emails and extensive journal entries.
Following its sell-out premiere season in the 80-seat Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, My Name Is Rachel Corrie returned to the Royal Court’s 395-seat Jerwood Theatre Downstairs for a second limited season last October. It was due to receive its US premiere at the New York Theatre Workshop this month ahead of a planned international tour.
However, when the New York run was called off four weeks ago, Workshop artistic director James Nicola said: “In our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that, after Ariel Sharon’s illness and the election of Hamas, we had a very edgy situation. We found that our plan to present a work of art would be seen as us taking a stand in a political conflict, that we didn’t want to take.” In response, Rickman issued a statement, saying that the theatre’s decision was “censorship born out of fear”.
My Name Is Rachel Corrie was the biggest straight play winner in this year’s Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Awards, triumphing in three categories: Best New Play, Best Solo Performance for Dodds and Best Director for Rickman and was also nominated for an Olivier for Outstanding Achievement at an Affiliate Theatre.
At the time of collecting the production’s Theatregoers’ Choice Awards, Rickman told Whatsonstage.com: “The way I feel about My Name Is Rachel Corrie winning these awards is, I think, what I felt every night in the theatre – that the audience somehow owned the play. With the best kind of work, you always feel like you give it away to the audience. As an actor or a director, I’m just there to facilitate that.” He added, with regards to his own personal Best Director win for the play: “Thank you very much indeed. It’s really not about me, it’s about Rachel. You have honoured her and her memory with these awards and now her story goes on.”
April 2nd, 2006 at 10:03 am
This is a pitiful in our country of the United States that we have to miss out on what sounds like a beautifully done and tasteful play because of fear of reprisals in the United States against Arab Americans. It really is a shame that the racist Zionist government of Israel has that much control over a minority in the United States that has done so many positive things in the United States in medicine, business, theatre and literature, and has shown great civic participation in this country since their immigration at the turn of the 19th century.