A (rescheduled) Day of Pleasure

A week after it was announced Everyman alumni George Costigan will return to the city in Crime and Punishment this autumn, so it has been confirmed one of the Ev's founding company members Stuart Richman will be back on the Liverpool stage this season too. He will be appearing at the Playhouse Studio in the world première tour of A Day of Pleasure, a new play adapted by The Useful Donkey Theatre Company based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s award-winning book. The production was initially penciled in for October last year but had to be postponed due to ill health; it will now run from September 26 to 28. Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Polish-born, Jewish-American author, a leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. He won two US National Book Awards, one in fiction for his collection A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, and one for A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw on which the play is based. His other notable works include The Spinoza of Market Street and A Friend of Kafka. The play is set the evening before Singer travels to Stockholm to collect the Nobel Prize for Literature, and recalls a fascinating childhood full of mystery, torment and adventure. The Playhouse describes it thus: "A Day of Pleasure is about more than a young boy growing up in a strange and exotic world; it is about growing up itself. Singer brings to life the vivid characters of pre-war Warsaw, his own character and the human conditions that affect us all". Richman said: “I’ve conjured up a persona of Isaac Bashevis Singer telling the stories so that it is not simply me telling the stories, it’s me as Bashevis Singer telling these vital elements of his life while preparing to go and receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.” A Day of Pleasure is the first show of the new season in The Studio, which includes Scrappers in November, the debut play by Everyman Playhouse Young Writers graduate Daniel Matthew.