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The House of Special Purpose

20 June - 22 August 2009 - WORLD PREMIERE

Minerva Theatre

By Heidi Thomas
Director Howard Davies

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Ekaterinberg, 1918. A wooden stockade surrounds a requisitioned house. Inside, the deposed Tsar of Russia is imprisoned with his wife, four daughters and invalid teenage son. Stripped of Imperial privilege, they are held captive by a ragtag detachment of Communist soldiers – raw young men recruited from the lowest ranks. The girls are on the brink of womanhood, their parents bowed beneath the weight of an all-consuming marriage. For one brief and airless summer, the House of Special Purpose holds them all within its walls.

Packed into the suffocating rooms, the family and their guards are forced into a frail and dangerous intimacy, tensions rising as boundaries strain and break.

Heidi Thomas’ recent work includes the original BBC television series Lilies, and screen adaptations of Madame Bovary, Ballet Shoes and I Capture the Castle. Her screenplays for the multi award-winning Cranford earned her BAFTA and Emmy nominations for Outstanding Writing, along with Best Writer Awards from the Royal Television Society, the Broadcasting Press Guild and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.

As Associate Director of the National Theatre, Howard Davies’ credits include Gethsemane, Her Naked Skin, Philistines, The Shaughraun, The Crucible and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Previously an Associate of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he established and ran the Warehouse Theatre where he produced and directed 35 new plays. He has recently directed The Breath of Life and Private Lives in the West End. His film and television credits include The Secret Rapture, Blue /Orange and Copenhagen.