Stockard Channing at the Almeida from 31 Aug

Stockard Channing at the Almeida from 31 Aug

Michael Attenborough will direct Stockard Channing in Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing!, which will open at the Almeida 6 Sep 2007, following previews from 31 Aug - running to 20 Oct 2007.

Further casting will be announced shortly.

Starkly dramatic and vividly comic, Awake and Sing! tells the story of the Bergers, a lower-middle-class, three-generation Jewish family living in a Bronx apartment during the 1930s. The family, ruled over by strong-willed matriarch Bessie, long for a better world for themselves.

American stage, film and television actor Stockard Channing will play Bessie. Her London theatre credits include The Exonerated at Riverside Studios and Six Degrees of Separation for the Royal Court, which transferred to the Comedy Theatre. Her New York theatre work includes Hapgood, Six Degrees of Separation and House of Blue Leaves all for the Lincoln Centre, Love Letters at the Promenade Theater, Women in Mind for Manhattan Theatre Club and Joe Egg at the Longacre Theatre, for which she won a Tony Award. On television she is best know for her role as First Lady Abbey Bartlett in the hugely popular US drama series, The West Wing. Her film credits include Six Degrees of Separation for which she was nominated for an Oscar, Up Close and Personal, Moll Flanders, Bright Young Things, Business of Strangers and Grease, in which she played Rizzo.