ABOUT THE PLAY

 

Rosamund Pike stars in Tennessee William’s classic American drama, Summer and Smoke.

 

Set in a small insular town in the Deep South, this is a gripping drama of miscommunication and repressed passion. Rosamund Pike plays Miss Alma, a woman who struggles to forge a connection with the man she has always loved – the handsome dissolute son of the town’s respected doctor, played by Chris Carmack. In the process, lives are changed forever in a way that none of those involved could have predicted.

Rosamund Pike was last seen on stage at the Royal Court and in the West End in Hitchcock Blonde, for which she received outstanding critical acclaim. She is know internationally for her roles in films including Pride and Prejudice, The Libertine and James Bond – Die Another Day. Chris Carmack is perhaps best known for his role as Luke in the hit American television series The OC. He has recently appeared off Broadway in Entertaining Mr Sloane. 

 

 

CAST & CREATIVE

 

Rev Winemiller - Christopher Ravenscroft

Mrs Winemiller - Angela Down

John Buchanan - Chris Carmack

Dusty/Vernon/Archie Kramer - Michael Brown

Pearl/Rosemary - Hannah Stokely

Dr Buchanan - David Killick

Alma - Rosamund Pike

Rosa - Hanne Steen

Nellie - Talulah Riley

Roger Doremus - Tom Lawrence

Mrs Bassett - Kate O’toole

Papa Gonzales - Sebastian Abineri

 

Author - Tennessee Williams

Director - Adrian Noble

Designer - Peter Mckintosh

Costume Designer - Deirdre Clancy

Licghting Designer - Peter Mumford

Sound Designer - John Leonard

Musical Director - Simon Lee

Choreographer - Sue Lefton

Associate Set Designer - David Farley

 

QUOTES & REVIEWS

 

THE PRODUCTION

 

A DRAMATIC KNOCKOUT 

The Daily Telegraph Charles Spencer

 

Adrian Noble’s luminous, sensitive and sharp production

****The Independent Paul Taylor

 

Noble’s beautiful direction and some lovely acting by a well-cast company 

****The Independent Paul Taylor

 

GENUINELY EROTIC STUFF 

****The Times Benedict Nightingale

 

Adrian Noble’s beautiful, absorbing production BOASTS TWO SCORCHING PERFORMANCES

****Mail on Sunday Georgina Brown

 

Adrian Noble’s production reveals the play’s enduring vitality…a sad, subtle story about the dynamics of sexual love 

***Evening Standard Nicholas de Jongh

 

THIS EXPERTLY JUDGED PRODUCTION… highly recommended

****The Independent Paul Taylor

 

PASSIONATELY CHARGED, this play is certainly worth reviving

Independent on Sunday Kate Bassett

 

A soulful encounter of spirit and flesh 

***The Guardian Michael Billington

 

Adrian Noble’s fine production could not be better cast

Whatsonstage.com Michael Coveney

 

Peter McKintosh is the designer of the week, and other aspects of the technical production – Deirdre Clancy’s costumes and Simon Lee’s brilliantly evocative musical direction – are as good as any in the West End at the moment

****Whatsonstage.com Michael Coveney

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Some excellent acting…A symbiosis that is subtle, strong, and packed with tantalising contradictions 

****The Times Benedict Nightingale

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Peter McKintosh’s design gives Summer and Smoke just the right kind of poetic spaciousness

****The Independent Paul Taylor

 

In Summer and Smoke Williams wrestles fascinatingly with sex and love. It makes a fine match

***Evening Standard Nicholas de Jongh

 

THIS HUGELY WELCOME REVIVAL

Daily Express Sheridan Morely

 

What is striking in Adrian Noble’s fine looking revival is the play’s lyrical freshness and sly comic touch

Metro Claire Allfree

 

Adrian Noble’s production WONDERFULLY CAPTURES A STEAMY, HOTHOUSE INTENSITY…heart clenching emotion  

Daily Express Sheridan Morely

 

Simply superb – class acting & dazzling production – West End theatre at it’s very best 

Neil Sean Sky News / Fox News

 

Keep your eyes on the two central characters, listen to the unmatchable theatrical poetry, revel in the delicacy but absolute control of Adrian Noble's direction, and be reminded of what a uniquely great playwright Tennessee Williams is 

 TheatreguideLondon Gerald Berkowitz

 

ROSAMUND PIKE

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Miss Pike is MAGNIFICENT, IMPERIOUS, BRILLIANT, SUPERB – throw at her every superlative in the critic’s over-mined cupboard, for all I care. In this show, she’s the tops…Stunning: Rosamund Pike steals the show 

*****The Daily Mail Quentin Letts

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Pike scales the tragic heights… proves herself a stage actress of real stature…Pike BEAUTIFULLY COMMUNICATES Alma’s poignant hope, her terrible loneliness and the deep underlying desire she tries so desperately to repress. The result is powerfully moving… the strength and candour of her emotion is devastating

The Daily Telegraph Charles Spencer

 

Rosamund Pike is one of the beauties of our age. Her performance… is one of the best things of the West End year 

*****The Daily Mail Quentin Letts

 

Played with TREMENDOUS SENSITIVITY and intelligence by a RADIANT Rosamund Pike

****Mail on Sunday Georgina Brown

 

Pike’s Alma… is sensually enraptured by Carmack's indolently experienced John

****The Times Benedict Nightingale

 

Rosamund Pike endows Alma with a porcelain beauty and a simmering sensuality

***The Guardian Michael Billington

 

Rosamund Pike reveals a deeply affecting blend of pathos, nobility and eloquence. Beautiful and fragile in looks, she plays the role with riveting focus 

****Financial Times Alastair Macaulay

 

Yet Rosamund Pike, that cool, pale English rose girl of chocolate-box good-looks, to whom natural elegance and sophistication insist upon clinging, never betrays the jangles and jitters of the chronically nervous or sexually virginal

***Evening Standard Nicholas de Jongh

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Rosamund Pike is a perfect Alma, combining peaches and cream beauty with a steel thread of self-doubt and spiritual decency

****Whatsonstage.com Michael Coveney

 

The exquisite Pike conveys not some vague conception of ethereality, but the complicated plight of a young woman

****The Independent Paul Taylor

 

Pike is a joy to watch…with limpid sensitivity and grace 

 Metro Claire Allfree

 

SCORCHING PERFORMANCES from Ms Pike and her leading man, Chris Carmack, projecting a heat that was smokin’

Baz Bamigboye Daily Mail

Rosamund Pike's Alma is real, touching and vulnerable… She shows us an Alma who can stand alongside Blanche Dubois and Maggie the Cat and Hannah Jelkes in Williams' pantheon of great female characters 

 TheatreguideLondon Gerald Berkowitz

CHRIS CARMACK

 

Carmack's local homme fatal, does not simply flaunt his sexy,model-boy good-looks. His surprisingly POWERFUL AND INTENSE PERFORMANCE reflects John's self-disgust and dismay that for him love is all down to sex - a violent contest that draws blood, scratches and disaster 

*** Evening Standard Nicholas de Jongh

 

Handsome Chris Carmack…a charismatic stage presence and a frightening animalism  ****Whatsonstage.com Michael Coveney

 

She is perfectly contrasted by Chris Carmack, with HIS FALLEN-ANGEL CHARM and his mixture of sensual abandon and painful embarrassment 

****Financial Times Alastair Macaulay

 

Chris Carmack brings much more than considerable sex appeal

****Mail on Sunday Georgina Brown

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Strong supporting performances, most notably from Chris Carmack as the handsome, rakish object of Alma’s desire 

The Daily Telegraph Charles Spencer

 

Chris Carmack, sporting an amazing coal scuttle lower jaw…Mr Carmack is undoubtedly a raw slice of trouser 

 *****The Daily Mail Quentin Letts

 

Chris Carmack makes you believe in Buchanan’s conversion from dissipated wreck to medical idealist 

***The Guardian Michael Billington

 

THE PLAY

 

A MODERN AMERICAN CLASSIC IS REDISCOVERED. Of all Tennessee Williams's plays none has been more mysteriously neglected here than this beautiful, poetic lament for a sexually desolate preacher's daughter, Alma Winemiller –

 ***Evening Standard Nicholas de Jongh

 

 

Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke is not often performed, but I can’t understand why. It is AN ELEGY TO THE CRUELTY OF FRUSTRATED LOVE and it show how sometime the virtuous path can lead to ruin, the ruinous to virtue, and how the two can fail to collide 

****The Daily Mail Quentin Letts

 

Williams’ play is full of plangent poetic beauty… a play which fully justifies revival 

The Guardian Michael Billington

 

So much in the play to admire…William’s evocation of small-town American life in 1916 is wonderfully observed 

***The Guardian Michael Billington

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Now that the subjugation of women has again resumed front-page status, Tennessee William’s rare play SUMMER AND SMOKE has more social relevance than one at first assumes 

****Financial Times Alastair Macaulay

 

You feel you are watching a tone poem, so beautifully is [SUMMER AND SMOKE] written…it is the missing side of the triangle made up of Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie  

 Daily Express Sheridan Morely

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