Steptoe and Son head to the Playhouse

"A darkly comic and deeply moving 20th century icon for the new millennium" is the description of a new play based on the scripts of Galton and Simpson’s Steptoe and Son, coming to the Playhouse from November 6 to 10. Last seen on the city stage with Hansel and Gretel at the Everyman in 2010, Kneehigh theatre company returns to Liverpool with their joint artistic director Emma Rice helming a new adaptation of the classic television scripts. Bound together by birth, business and bloody bad luck, Albert and Harold Steptoe wake up every morning to the same old, same old, sickening sight of each other. Joined at the hip and heart, they bother, bicker and banter their way through life - toying with each other’s frailties like mean kittens. Two men, two world wars and two lives knitted together as tight as a thrice darned sock. Emma Rice said: “The words, situations and basic genius of this script are all the work and imagination of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. I laughed and wept in equal measure as I made my way through the scripts that make up the Steptoe and Son cannon. The work is deeper, darker and more intricate than I’d ever realized, watching as a child.”Rice’s credits as a director include The Red Shoes (2002 TMA Theatre Award for Best Director), The Bacchae (2005 TMA Theatre Award for Best Touring Production), Brief Encounter (tour and West End; Studio 54, Broadway; 2009 Olivier Award nomination for Best Director), and Spymonkey’s Oedipussy which toured to the Playhouse earlier this year.The cast includes Dean Nolan (Ashes to Ashes, BBC; The Master and Margarita, National Youth Theatre; A Taste of Honey, Salisbury Playhouse); Mike Shepherd (Midnight’s Pumpkin, The Red Shoes and Don John, Kneehigh; Anna Karenina); and Kirsty Woodward (Cymbeline, Kneehigh/RSC co-production; The Way of the World, Sheffield Crucible; The Winter’s Tale, Hamlet, RSC). For tickets and more information, visit the Playhouse's site.