Katrina cast revealed

The cast of a promenade performance aiming to shed new light on the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has been announced. Andrew Dennis, Andrea Harris, Stephanie Langton, Wunmi Mosaku, Joe Speare and Orlando Wells will star in Katrina when it runs in London during September.

Staged at the five storey Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf, Katrina will use the accounts of survivors and those responsible for the failed relief effort to explore the disaster which devastated the city of New Orleans in August 2005.

The cast shares a wealth of stage experience. Harris is a Royal Shakespeare Company regular who was last seen in London earlier this year in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while Mosaku has starred in Mules (Young Vic), The Vertical Hour (Royal Court) and Rough Crossings (Lyric Hammersmith).

Wells’s London credits include The History Boys (National Theatre) and Pirandello’s Henry IV (Donmar Warehouse), Speare appeared in reggae musical The Harder They Come, Langton starred in A Few Good Men at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and Dennis has worked with the RSC, Royal Court and in the West End.

Though Hurricane Katrina did not directly hit New Orleans, the resulting storms caused rotting levees to collapse, releasing floodwater from the neighbouring Lake Pontchartrain into the city, swamping 80% of the homes and leaving many inhabitants without food or clean water for a week before anyone came to their aid.

MA