The UK premiere of the award-winning The Journey to Venice opens at the Finborough Theatre for a four week limited season on Tuesday, 28 February 2023
Edith and Oscar Tellmann have been together since before they can remember.
When their family life took a turn, the couple found solace in travel and adventure. But now they’re well into their 80s, stuck in a drab flat, surrounded by cats, books, memories, and leaking pipes.
As they journey into old age, the couple invent a new way to travel together…
The Journey to Venice is a celebration of ageing, fantasy, love, and the sacrifices we make in order to keep on living.The Journey to Venice is a modern Norwegian classic, winning the Norwegian Ibsen Prize in 1992 and televised in 1993. Recently revived in Norway, it has been staged in Germany, the Czech Republic and Denmark, and now receives its long-overdue UK premiere at the multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre.
Playwright Bjørg Vik (1935–2018) made her mark on Norwegian literature over a period of more than thirty years. Born in Oslo, she made her literary debut in 1963 and went on to publish twenty five works, including novels, short stories, plays, and radio-plays. During the 1960s and 1970s, her work presented an unusual and provocative image of the erotically active woman, and she co-founded the feminist magazine Sirene. In 1974, her Two Plays For Five Women was a hit throughout the Nordic countries, and played internationally including on Broadway. At the end of the 1980s, she published the semi-autobiographical Elsi Lund trilogy of novels, bringing her work to a new generation. Her many awards included the Norwegian Critics’ Prize for Literature, the Norwegian Ibsen Prize, the Norwegian Broadcasting’s Radio-Play Prize, the Riksmål Society Literature Prize, the Bookseller’s Award, the Dobloug Prize, the Aschehoug Prize, the Cappelen Prize and the Amalie Skram Prize, and three nominations for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize.
Translator Janet Garton is Emeritus Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia where she taught Scandinavian Literature and Languages 1969-2008. She has an MA and PhD from the University of Cambridge. She was made an MBE in 1995, was awarded Fritt Ords honnørpris in 2007 and became Ridder av Den kongelige norske fortjenesteorden in 2009. Her books include Jens Bjørneboe: Prophet without Honor (1985), Norwegian Women’s Writing 1850-1990 (1993) and a biography of Amalie Skram: Amalie. Et forfatterliv (2011). She is a director of Norvik Press, and also a translator – most recently of Kirsten Thorup (The God of Chance, 2013), Johan Borgen (Little Lord, 2016), Erik Fosnes Hansen (Lobster Life, 2019) and Jan Kjærstad (Berge, 2019). In 2019-20, she was a guest researcher at the Society for Danish Language and Literature in Copenhagen.Director Wiebke Green recently directed The New York Times Critics’ Pick and OffWestEnd OnComm Winner
The Poltergeist by Philip Ridley at the Arcola Theatre. Direction includes Tarantula (Southwark Playhouse), The Beast will Rise (Online for the New Normal Festival), Sadness and Joy in the Life of Giraffes (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond), This Might Not Be It (R&D project with Bush Theatre and Broccoli Arts), and Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands (Vault Festival). She trained at the Orange Tree Theatre with an MA in Theatre Directing, and as Intern Director to Katie Mitchell on Orlando (Schaubühne Berlin) and Anatomie eines Suizids (Schauspielhaus Hamburg). Assistant Direction includes Scrounger (Finborough Theatre), Dealing with Clair (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond), The Beast of Blue Yonder (ArtsEd), The Frontier Trilogy and Sirenia (Edinburgh Fringe). Her work with drama schools includes Heather’s Wedding as a guest director for Mountview’s Catalyst Festival ((Theatre503), As You Like It (MFA Shakespeare with the London School of Dramatic Art), and a forthcoming production for the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Cast
Charlotte Beaumont | Vivian Sunde
Productions at the Finborough Theatre includes Blue Heaven.
Theatre includes Fair Play, The Flooded Grave and 2,000 Feet Away (Bush Theatre), The Lovely Bones (Birmingham Rep), The Importance of Being Earnest (Watermill Theatre, Newbury), Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe), No One Will Tell Me How To Start A Revolution (Hampstead Theatre), Three Winters (National Theatre), Love Your Soldiers (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield) and Playhouse Creatures (Chichester Festival Theatre).
Film includes Jupiter Ascending,Skip Girl, Butterfly Kisses, The Windmill, Balcony, Tommy, Six Bullets and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.
Television includes Broadchurch, Waterloo Road, Zapped, Death in Paradise,Holby City, EastEnders, Doctors, Midsomer Murders, Obsession, Coming Up: Sink or Swim and Skins.
Tim Hardy | Oscar Tellmann
Productions at the Finborough Theatre include Days of Cafavy, Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams and Waiting for Godot.
Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Theatre includes Tartuffe (Bristol Old Vic), The Norman Conquests (Oxford Playhouse), Mad And Her Dad (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith), The Good Woman of Szechwan (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond), Peer Gynt (Battersea Arts Centre), Melon (Theatre Royal, Haymarket), Mary Barnes (Royal Court Theatre and Birmingham Rep), Marat/Sade (Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre and Broadway), Lysistrata (The Old Vic), The Trials of Galileo (UK tour), A Pure Woman (Theatre Royal, Winchester, and UK Tour), Love, Genius and a Walk (Teatro Technis) and Fiddler on the Roof (Her Majesty’s Theatre).
Film includes Marat/Sade, The Duelists and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Television includes Macbeth, The Bill, Emmerdale, EastEnders, Oscar, Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath, Voyages of Discovery,Casualty 1909, Midsomer Murders and Berlin Wall.
Tim teaches on many of the short courses at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and also held classes and workshops in many US universities whilst on three ACTER tours (The Winter’s Tale, Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice), and directed work including Rebecca and Dangerous Liaisons (Vienna’s English Speaking Theatre), and Gaslight (Frankfurt English Speaking Theatre).
Annabel Leventon | Edith Tellmann
Productions at the Finborough Theatre include Perchance to Dream.
Trained at the London Academy of Music and Drama, and Café La Mama in New York.
Theatre includes Hair! for which she was nominated for Actress of the Year (London and Paris), The Philanthropist, Rocket To The Moon,Spokesong,The Dresser, Noel and Gertie, Shadows of the Evening, Red Peppers, Dear World, Something Unspoken, Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell. Honk!, The Ugly Duckling and Pillars of the Community (National Theatre), Twelfth Night and Comedy of Errors (Royal Shakespeare Company), I Am Shakespeare (The Old Vic), A Month In The Country, Othello, The Good Woman of Szechwan, Twelfth Night (Oxford Playhouse) and Good Fun (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield).
Film includes Mussolini, Defence of the Realm, Le Mur de l’Atlantique, M Butterfly, Shock Treatment, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Work Experience, Wimbledon, The Nest, This Camera Is Broken, and the forthcoming Peter O’Toole: Along The Sky Road to Aqaba.
Television includes The White Rabbit, Crown Court, Hugh and I Spy, Strike It Rich, Penmarric, Minder, Bergerac, Dixon of Dock Green, The New Avengers, Second City Firsts, Anglia, Play of the Month, On Giants’ Shoulders, London Bridge, Vera and Chivalry.
Annabel is a trustee for the Shakespeare Authorship Trust. She was the creator and co-founder of three-girl rock group Rock Bottom, on which the BAFTA winning television series Rock Follies and Mamma Mia are based. Her memoir The Real Rock Follies was short-listed for the Myslexia Memoir Prize, and was Book of the Week in The Bookseller, and is being adapted for the stage in 2023.
Nathan Welsh | Christopher Karlsen
Trained at the London Academy of Music and Drama.
Theatre includes The Effect (English Theatre, Frankfurt), Macbeth (Chichester Festival Theatre), Sadness and Joy in the Life of Giraffes (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond), Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe), The Play About My Dad (Jermyn Street Theatre), The Way of the World (Donmar Warehouse), Circa (Work Theatre and The Vaults), Lord of the Flies (Broadway Studio Theatre, Catford), Crime of the Century and Extension 000 (Chickenshed). Theatre whilst training includes The Merchant of Venice, Antony and Cleopatra, Port, Man of Mode, Three Sisters, Women Beware Women and Eigengrau.
Film includes The Ledge, Much Ado About a Minor Ting, Days and Life Sentence.
Television includes Shetland, Trust Me, Obsession: Dark Desires and Navid and Johnny.
THE JOURNEY TO VENICE
(Reisen til Venezia)
by Bjørg Vik
Translated by Janet Garton.
Directed by Wiebke Green. Set and Costume Design by Kit Hinchcliffe. Lighting by Martha Godfrey. Sound by Julian Starr.
Presented by Anarchy Division in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.Cast: Charlotte Beaumont. Tim Hardy. Annabel Leventon. Nathan Welsh.
Finborough Theatre
118 Finborough Rd, London SW10 9ED, United Kingdom