Daytona, Theatre Royal Haymarket

After last year's dazzling premiere at The Park Theatre, Daytona, transfers to the West End this summer for eight weeks only. Playwright Oliver Cotton is also set to star in his own show. 

The Story...

Set in a wintery Brooklyn of ‘86, Joe and Elli Zimmerman are practising for their next senior’s ballroom competition. A Jewish couple in their seventies, they’ve been happily married for fifty years. Whilst Elli is out buying her new ballroom dress, however, Joe’s estranged brother Billy arrives unexpectedly, in overcoat and Hawaiian shirt, bearing Chinese food as a peace offering. Newly arrived from Daytona Beach, he needs somewhere to lie low for a while; his wartime past has caught up with him. It is a play concerning the clash of loyalty, the need to avenge injustice, and atonement. 

The Background...

 Along with a successful career at the RSC, Oliver Cotton has performed at the National under the leadership of Laurence Olivier, at the Old Vic, the Globe and the Royal Court. Perhaps inspired by speaking the words of so many great playwrights— from Pinter to Frayn, Shakespeare to Wilde — Cotton is also a gifted dramatist. Author of nine screenplays, this is his sixth work for the stage. He crafted Daytona with the help of his friend Maureen Lipman, who loved it so much upon her first reading that she asked to play Elli. Inspiration came during a stay in Daytona Beach itself. “Lying by that crowded pool I suddenly imagined the inciting moment of the play and couldn’t get it out of my head.” He describes it as a love story for older people.

The Production...

In this 2014 revival, Cotton plays the brother Joe. Perfectly suited with his European background and time spent in Brooklyn, he is an ideal foil for Harry Shearer’s West Coast heritage. Shearer is the immensely talented voiceover artist of The Simpsons, who has played dozens of recurring characters in over five hundred episodes. He is a wonderfully laconic comedian, whose mockumentary films This is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind have become cult classics. 

Perhaps more famous here on her native soil, Maureen Lipman makes any production unforgettable. Her turn in Barefoot in the Park in 2012 revitalised a dated comedy with “impeccable comic timing” (What's on Stage). But though well-known for her humour (in addition to acting, she has penned several hilarious memoirs) Lipman finds truth in the  tragedy, as anyone who recalls her tearful monologue in the BBC’s Eskimo Day will attest. A similar speech about heartbreak in Daytona is “utterly mesmerising” according to The Independent .

Devastating revelations and relationships at breaking point, Daytona might well become a modern classic in its own right. An intelligent three-hander, it is haunting yet funny. Of his fellow actors, Oliver Cotton says, “I’m very moved by what they’re doing and honoured that they’re performing my play.”