Personal Enemy at 59E59 from 4 - 28 Nov

The 2010 Brits Off-Broadway festival presents the US premiere of John Osborne and Anthony Creighton's recently rediscovered play Personal Enemy, produced by FallOut Theatre, opening at 59E59's Theater B on 10 Nov 2010, following previews from 4 Nov and running through to 28 Nov 2010.

Personal Enemy is a depiction of the political and sexual paranoia that gripped America during the height of McCarthyism, when the public enemy suddenly became a lot more personal.

Directed by David Aula, Personal Enemy is performed by Karen Lewis, Tony Turner, Genevieve Allenbury, Mark Oosterveen, Joanne King, Peter Clapp and Steven Clarke.

The design team features set design by Anna Hourriere, costumes by Namiko Mitoma, lighting by James Baggaley and sound by Edward Lewis.

Osborne himself believed Personal Enemy was destroyed, but the play was uncovered in 2008 in the Lord Chamberlain's archives (the man charged with censoring all plays in Britain until 1968) in the British Library, along with another "lost play" of Osborne's 'The Devil Inside Him.' Oberon published both plays in 2009, and the book includes a foreword by playwright Peter Nichols, represented at Brits Off Broadway 2010 with Lingua Franca. Nichols and Osborne appeared onstage together in 1953, and were both part of Britain's "new wave" of writers from that time period.

A heavily censored version of Personal Enemy was originally produced in 1955 at the Opera House in Harrogate to mixed critical reception. Jamie Andrews, head of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library, explains "(Lord Chamberlain's) furious excisions of pages of text both contributed to the play's initial failure, and—paradoxically— ensured its survival (the only copy of the text was preserved in Lord Chamberlain's own archive, now in the British Library)."

The FallOut Theatre production marks the first time Personal Enemy appears onstage uncensored, the way Osborne and Creighton had intended.