Edmond Photos - Off-Broadway

McQUEEN, which received its world premiere in May at St. James Theatre, where it broke box office records, opens tonight, Thursday 27 August, in London's West End, at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, for a strictly limited season until 7 November.

In the raw, urgent, riotous 'American Buffalo', three small-time crooks plot to steal a priceless coin collection. Strategizing from the confines of a pathetic Chicago junk shop, the would-be masterminds each try to control the logistics of their ill-fated scheme. But along the way they make virtually every mistake imaginable and their outlandishly bad planning, stupidity and ego ultimately make for just about the most poorly concocted heist of all time.

The Hairy Ape follows the saga of Yank, a maritime laborer who questions his place in society when branded as 'a filthy beast' by the rich daughter of a steel industrialist. In a series of eight scenes, O'Neill chronicles Yank's struggle with 'the human condition,' caught somewhere between his own primitive nature and the more intellectually based-and emotionally vacant-upper classes. Rejected by the bourgeois of Fifth Avenue as well as his fellow workers, Yank finally seeks solace from the only creature with whom he finds kinship: an ape in the Central Park Zoo. The Provincetown Players premiered The Hairy Ape, O'Neill's sixth play, in March 1922 under the direction of frequent O'Neill collaborator Robert Edmond Jones. That production, featuring Louis Wolheim's powerful performance as Yank, moved that April to Broadway's Plymouth Theatre. In 1944, a film version of the play featured William Bendix and in the ensuing decades the play has received dozens of notable revivals around the country; perhaps the most celebrated of these was The Wooster Group's 1996 production, featuring Willem Dafoe as Yank.

Philip Howard's sell-out Traverse Theatre Company production of David Greig's Damascus is to be presented at the Tricycle Theatre by Michael Edwards and Carole Winter for MJE Productions. Damascus will run from 3 February - 7 March 2009 with press night on Monday 9 February. Designs are by Anthony Macllwaine, lighting is by Chahine Yavroyan, the composer/arranger is Jon Beales and sound is by Graham Sutherland. The original Traverse Theatre Company cast - Nathalie Armin, Alex Elliott, Dolya Gavanski, Paul Higgins and Khalid Laith - will reprise their roles.