Meera Syal and Lucian Msamati will star in Anders Lustgarten’s new play If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep at the Royal Court theatre next month.
Arguably best known for her on screen roles in The Kumars At Number 42 and Goodness Gracious Me, Syal was last seen on the London stage in the RSC’s Much Ado About Nothing at the Noël Coward theatre, but has appeared extensively on stage in the past few years, with credits including Rafta Rafta at the National Theatre, Shirley Valentine at the Menier Chocolate Factory and in the West End, and The Killing Of Sister George at the Arts theatre.
Her co-star Msamati has previously appeared at the Royal Court in multi-award-winning satire Clybourne Park and Belong, a co-production with leading British African theatre company Tiata Fahodzi, of which he is Artistic Director. Msamati’s other stage credits include The Comedy Of Errors and Death And The King’s Horseman at the National Theatre, and Ruined at the Almeida theatre.
Syal and Msamati will be joined in the cast of Simon Godwin’s production by Susan Brown, Laura Elphinstone and Daniel Kendrick, who have all appeared at the Sloane Square venue in the past year.
Star of Goodbye To All That, Brown’s theatre credits include Making Noise Quietly at the Donmar Warehouse and Saved at the Lyric Hammersmith. Love And Information’s Elphinstone has appeared on stage in Chalet Lines at the Bush theatre, Utopia at the Soho theatre and Top Girls at Chichester Festival Theatre and in the West End, while Kendrick appeared in Ding Dong The Wicked and Vera Vera Vera, both at the Royal Court.
The cast of If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep, a play that explodes the ethos of austerity and offers an alternative, grappling with the complex question of national debt, will also include Ben Dilloway (King Lear at the Almeida theatre), Damien Molony (Travelling Light at the NT) and Ferdy Roberts (Three Kingdoms, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Three Sisters at the Lyric Hammersmith), who is also co-Artistic Director of acclaimed theatre company Filter Theatre.
The production, which will be staged in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs without décor, will play from 15 February to 9 March, following Martin Crimp’s In The Republic Of Happiness, which closes on 19 January.