Richard Eyre was named Best Director for Ghosts at this year’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Lesley Manville was nominated for the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress and the production’s Designer Tim Hatley and Lighting Designer Peter Mumford were jointly nominated for Best Design.
Helene Alving has spent her life suspended in an emotional void after the death of her cruel but outwardly charming husband. She is determined to escape the ghosts of her past by telling her son, Oswald, the truth about his father. But on his return from his life as a painter in France, Oswald reveals how he has already inherited the legacy of his father’s dissolute life.
Multi award-winning theatre, film and television actor Lesley Manville was last on stage in Grief at the National Theatre, where she has previously been seen in Her Naked Skin, Pillars of the Community, The Alchemist and His Dark Materials. Other theatre credits include Six Degrees of Separation and All About My Mother at the Old Vic, Top Girls, Serious Money, The Pope’s Wedding and Three Sisters at the Royal Court and for the Royal Shakespeare Company she has been seen in The Wives’ Excuse, Les Liaisons Dangereuses and As You Like It. On screen, Lesley has regularly collaborated with Mike Leigh in films including Another Year, All or Nothing, Topsy-Turvy, Secrets and Lies and High Hopes. Her other film credits include The Christmas Candle, Molly Moon, Maleficent, Romeo and Juliet, Spike Island and A Christmas Carol. On television her credits include An Adventure in Space and Time, The Man Who Would Be Bond, Mayday, Cranford, North and South, Bodily Harm, Other Peoples' Children, Promoted To Glory, The Cazalets, David Copperfield, Painted Lady, The Bite, Holding On, Tears Before Bedtime, A Statement of Affairs, Top Girls, Grown-Ups and The Firm.
Richard Eyre’s credits at the Almeida include The Dark Earth and the Light Sky, David Hare’s The Judas Kiss - his first production after leaving the National Theatre where he was Director from 1988 - 1997 - The Novice andHedda Gabler. His more recent work as a director for the stage includes the award-winning production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible on Broadway, the world premieres of Nicholas Wright’s Vincent in Brixton and The Reporter both for the National Theatre, Noel Coward’s Private Lives on Broadway and the musical Mary Poppins. Most recently he directed Stephen Ward The Musical currently running at the Aldwych Theatre,Quartermaine’s Terms at the Wyndham’s Theatre and The Pajama Game for Chichester Festival Theatre which transfers to the Shaftesbury Theatre in May. For television his credits include Changing Stages - a BBC Series on the history of theatre in the 20th century, which he co-wrote with Nicholas Wright and presented and the BAFTA award-winning Tumbledown. Eyre recently directed the critically-acclaimed Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 for the BBC’s 2012 Shakespeare Season. His film credits include Iris, Stage Beauty, Notes on a Scandal and The Other Man.
Ghosts is produced in the West End by Sonia Friedman Productions and the Almeida Theatre with Rupert Gavin, Tanya Link Productions and JFL Theatricals/GHF Productions in association with 1001 Nights.