Alison Chitty returns to NT with Mike Leigh

Alison Chitty renews her regular collaboration with Mike Leigh on a new play entitled Grief for the Cottesloe Theatre at the National Theatre which previewed on September 14 and opened officially on September 21. There are numerous performances planned until January 28 2013.

This will be the second time Chitty has worked with Mike Leigh this year following their sell-out revival of Ecstasy at the Hampstead Theatre, which they first created together in 1979. The new show was a sell out and went on to enjoy a West End transfer to the Duchess Theatre.

They have previously worked together at the National Theatre on Two Thousand Years in 2005 and Chitty also designed Leigh’s films Life Is Sweet, Naked and Secrets and Lies.

“The action is set in a suburb near London and follows its characters through several months in 1957-58. The period setting is meticulously caught in both Alison Chitty’s oppressively neat but cheerless suburban living room design, the Fifties clothes, and the flavour of the dialogue” - Daily Telegraph

“On Alison Chitty’s living-room set, which has been created with an encyclopedic eye for detail, the play moves quietly but inexorably to its awful conclusion”
- The Arts Desk