Cast is announced for Home’s first theatre production

The cast for the eagerly awaited first theatre production at HOME, directed by Walter Meierjohann has been announced. 

 The Funfair, directed by Walter Meierjohann, will see Wigan-born actor Ben Batt of Shameless, Scott & Bailey and Captain America fame play Cash while Katie Moore of Paradise, Doc Martin, Call the Midwife, and 2014 Manchester Theatre Award nominee will be playing Caroline.

 The adaptation of Ödön von Horváth’s classic 1932 play Kasimir and Karoline, which features a cast of 13 actors and actor-musicians, by Olivier Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens relocates the play from the 1929 Oktoberfest to North West England and draws parallels with the political tensions and social uncertainties of early 21st century Great Britain. 

 The production reunites the team behind Romeo & Juliet – Director Walter Meierjohann, Dramaturg Petra-Jane Tauscher, Designer Ti Green, who scooped the Best Design award at the recent Manchester Theatre Awards, and Lighting Designer Mike Gunning.

 It also features video designs by Louis Price, who worked on Meierjohann’s 2011 Liverpool Playhouse production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. The Musical Director for The Funfair is composer Dave Price, and Louis Hammond returns as Casting Director. 

 Complete with freak-show, live band, and a big dipper, The Funfair tells the dark and humorous story of Cash and Caroline, two young lovers, whose break-up is played out against the backdrop of economic and social hardship. 

 Originally set one night during the Oktoberfest in 1929, Stephens’ adaptation draws clear parallels between the political tensions of the period, around the time of the Wall Street Crash and its global implications, to today’s social uncertainties, yet still finds plenty of dry humour in the bright lights of a busy funfair. And with a General Election, regarded as the most important and hard-to-predict in a generation, taking place a week before the play opens, The Funfair could not be timelier. 

 Kasimir and Karoline is also the inspiration for The heart is deceitful above all things, HOME’s debut group exhibition (Fri 22 May – Sun 26 July). Curated by Sarah Perks, Artistic Director: Visual Art, and Omar Kholeif, Senior Visiting Curator at HOME, the show explores love, loss and heartbreak. It features six new remarkable commissions alongside significant existing works by 11 international artists including Jeremy Bailey, Declan Clarke, Douglas Coupland, Irina Gheorghe, Flaka Haliti, Ragnar Kjartansson, Basim Magdy, Gemma Parker, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Jessey Tsang and Wu-Tsang.

 The exhibition will also be accompanied by a specially curated film programme including UK premieres by artists Rosa Barba and Stanya Kahn.