Casting has been announced for The Oyster Problem, Orlando Figue’s debut play which will run at the Jermyn Street Theatre from 9 February-4 March. 

Bob Barrett (Holby City, BBC) returns to Jermyn Street Theatre in the role of Gustave Flaubert, with Giles Taylor (A Christmas Carol, RSC) as Ivan Turgenev.  Peter Hannah (Waitress, West End) as Emile Zola, Norma Atallah (Follies, National Theatre) as George Sand and Juliette Adam, and Rosalind Lailey (The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Watermill Theatre) as Caroline Commanville.

The Oyster Problem tells the story of Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary made him the most famous writer in Paris, but thanks to a bad publishing deal, he can barely afford a croissant, let alone oysters. His friends Emile Zola, Ivan Turgenev and George Sand beg him to dumb down his work, but he won’t do that. He must find a job. 

Figes said: “I wrote this play, my first, as a hobby and experiment to see if I was any good at writing plays. It came out of my work on The Europeans, which dealt with the meeting between art and money in the age of the railways. I fell in love with Flaubert, as an artist and a man, through his letters to Turgenev and George Sand, who clearly loved him too. Their correspondence gave me the idea and some of the conversations of the play, which I hope will entertain and make us think again about the artist in the modern world.” 

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