The Black Album
Cottesloe Theatre

Previews from14 July, continuing in repertoire
THE BLACK ALBUM by Hanif Kureishi opens in the Cottesloe Theatre on 21 July, directed by Jatinder Verma. The production will be designed by Tim Hatley, with costumes by Claudia Mayer, lighting by Jvan Morandi, video by Tom Hadley, music by Sister Bliss, choreography by Shobana Jeyasingh and sound by Fergus O’Hare. The cast is: Alexander Andreou, Jonathan Bonnici, Tanya Franks, Sean Gallagher, Beruce Khan, Nitin Kundra, Shereen Martineau, Robert Mountford and Glyn Pritchard. THE BLACK ALBUM is a co-production between the National Theatre and Tara Arts.

An Asian kid from Kent goes to college in London and teams up with a sympathetic group of anti-racists. But it’s 1989, the year of the fatwa, and as Shahid begins a hedonistic affair with his lecturer, his radical Muslim friends want to steer him away from the decadence of the West.

Hanif Kureishi’s stage adaptation of his strikingly prescient and acclaimed novel, The Black Album, humorously considers how the events of 1989 have shaped today’s world, where fundamentalism battles liberalism.

Hanif Kureishi’s novels include Something to Tell You, Gabriel’s Gift, Intimacy and the semi-autobiographical The Buddha of Suburbia, which was adapted for television for the BBC. His plays include Sleep With Me and a version of Brecht’s Mother Courage at the National, Birds of Passage (Hampstead), Soaking the Heat and Borderline (Royal Court). His screenplays include My Beautiful Laundrette, The Mother and Venus.

Jatinder Verma is co-founder and Artistic Director of Tara Arts, the pioneering cross-cultural theatre company which tours nationally and internationally, and marked its 30th year in 2007 with his production of The Tempest. He has directed Tartuffe, The Little Clay Cart and Cyrano de Bergerac for the NT;  he produced Journey to the West for Tara, a trilogy of plays tracing the story of Asian migration and settlement in the West over the 20th century.  For BBC Radio 4 his work includes the Sony Award-winning Ashes to the Ganges and the three-part serialisation of The Mahabharata.

THE BLACK ALBUM will go on tour following its run at the NT, including visits to:  West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds (w/c 20 October), Liverpool Playhouse (w/c 27 October), Oxford Playhouse (w/c 10 November), Warwick Arts Centre (w/c 17 November) and Bath Theatre Royal (w/c 23 November).
For more details, please visit: www.tara-arts.com

Contact (NT/Cottesloe):  Jennifer Reynolds on 020 7452 3233 or jreynolds@nationaltheatre.org.uk;
(for tour) David Bloom at Target Live on 020 7907 1777 or david.bloom@target-live.co.uk