Taken At Midnight To Transfer To The West End

Jonathan Church’s world premiere production of Taken At Midnight, a new play by Mark Hayhurst, will run at the Theatre Royal Haymarket for a limited season previewing from January 15th. Returning to the West End after a five-year absence, Penelope Wilton reprises her role as Irmgard in this production which is currently enjoying a sold-out season in Chichester.

Last seen in the West End opposite Jude Law’s Hamlet in 2009, Penelope Wilton originates the role of Irmgard, the mother of celebrated lawyer Hans Litten who puts Hitler on the witness stand in 1930s Germany with devastating consequences.

Staged as part of Chichester Festival Theatre’s Hidden Histories season, Irmgard’s relationship with her son, Hans, and her courageous efforts to help him are at the heart of this compelling new play. Building his reputation on drama documentaries which explore key historical moments, Mark Hayhurst also wrote37 Days, a major factual drama series for the BBC’s WW1 Centenary in 2014.

In Taken At Midnight, his theatre debut, Hayhurst casts light on a universal theme as the mother of brilliant German Jewish lawyer Hans Litten fights for his release against the seemingly impossible might of the Nazi regime. Fearless and indomitable she confronts his captors at enormous personal risk. The unquestionable love of a mother for her son is put centre stage in Hayhurst’s study of the horrors of pre-war Nazi Germany.

Commissioned by commercial producer Mark Goucher, and written with Penelope Wilton in mind Taken at Midnight is Mark Hayhurst’s first work for the stage. Its success in Chichester and this transfer to the West End, foregrounds Hayhurst as a new and distinctive playwright. The first new play to open in the West End in 2015 and playing for a strictly limited season, it is a rare opportunity to see one of the UK’s leading performers in a significant and important new play.

Taken At Midnight will run at Theatre Royal Haymarket until March 14th .

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