A Little Night Music
by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler
27 June to 6 July 2019
Sondheim's 1973 musical, based on the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, follows aging actress Desiree Armfeldt, her mother Madame Armfeldt, and a series of interwoven love affairs during one eventful weekend in the country. Famously includes the song Send In The Clowns.
The God of Carnage
by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton
23 May to 1 June 2019
What happens when two sets of parents meet up to deal with the unruly behaviour of their children? A calm and rational debate between grown-ups about the need to teach kids how to behave properly? Or a hysterical night of name-calling, tantrums and tears before bedtime? Boys will be boys, but the adults are usually worse – much worse. Christopher Hampton's translation of Yasmina Reza's sharp-edged play The God of Carnage premiered at the Gielgud Theatre, London, in March 2008.
Dangerous Corner
by J B Priestley
25 April to 4 May 2019
At their stylish country retreat, Freda and Robert Caplan host a dinner party for their colleagues and friends, all executives at a transatlantic publishing company. Young, beautiful and successful they have the world at their feet. Then a cigarette box and an ill-considered remark spark off a relentless series of revelations and other, more dangerous secrets are painfully exposed. As the truth spills out about the suicide of Robert's clever, reckless brother, and the group's perfect lives begin to crumble, the cost of professional and social success becomes frighteningly plain.
London Suite
by Neil Simon
21 March to 30 March 2019
4 mini-plays from one of America’s greatest comic playwrights, all set in the same room of a London hotel. An inebriated Welsh writer who has a score to settle with his crooked business manager. A daughter who sends her widowed mother out on a date with a Scotsman on their last night in the city. A bittersweet reunion between divorcees Diana and Sidney. A couple who’ve misplaced their Wimbledon tickets and are having difficulties in giving up their room to a celebrity who needs it immediately.
The Pitmen Painters
by Lee Hall
14 to 23 February 2019
When a group of coal miners begin evening classes with a Master of Painting from King’s College Newcastle, they want to learn about art: what’s good, what’s bad and what it all means. What started out as an unassuming evening class in Art Appreciation in the 1930s becomes one of the great stories of the century, as The Ashington Group’s paintings take the British art world by storm. Based on this true story, The Pitmen Painters is an inspiring, funny, feelgood play about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and the magic that can be found in everyday life.
Daisy Pulls It Off
by Denise Deegan
10 to 19 January 2019
1927 – Daisy Meredith is the first scholarship girl taken from an elementary school to be granted access to the hallowed halls of the prestigious Grangewood School for Young Ladies. Enthusiastic and plucky to the last, Daisy finds herself struggling against unspeakable snobs Sybil Burlington and Monica Smithers, who concoct ghastly schemes to get her expelled. Ably assisted by her new best friend, madcap Trixie Martin, Daisy finds herself caught up in a series of irresistible adventures including the search for missing “Beaumont Treasure”. Can Daisy work out the mysterious clues and save the school from closure? What secrets does the enigmatic Mr Scoblowski hide? This side-splittingly funny spoof of English schoolgirl adventure novels is top notch!
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens, adated by Neil Bartlett
29 November to 8 December 2018
"Oh, but he was a squeezing, wrenching, scraping, grasping kind of a Scrooge; a clutching, covetous old sinner..." Using only Charles Dickens' extraordinary words and a chameleon ensemble of eight actors, Neil Bartlett's A Christmas Carol is a bold theatrical reimagining of a classic Christmas story. This stage version was adapted for the festive season of 2002-3, and played to full houses and critical acclaim at both the Lyric Hammersmith, London, and the Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow.
The Father
by Florian Zeller, translated by Christopher Hampton
25 October to 3 November 2018
This play by French playwright Florian Zeller premiered in September 2012 and won the 2014 Molière Award for Best Play. Translated into English by Christopher Hampton, the play gained widespread critical acclaim when it premiered as The Father at Bath’s Theatre Royal in 2014, followed by two runs in the West End. It starred Kenneth Cranham in the lead role, winning him the 2016 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Play.
Andre is a man facing persecution from all sides. First some girl, a “helper” - whom he doesn’t need at all - steals his favourite watch. Then his daughter Anne tries to take his flat away and Anne’s husband (or lover) Pierre, is not at all sympathetic. To top it off, strangers keep entering Andre’s flat, telling him that they are his friends and family. However aged he may be, Andre knows that he is a powerful man, a man of authority. After all, he still has all his faculties... doesn’t he?
A darkly humorous and deeply poignant play, The Father is a tragi-comic mystery, and an unsentimental, emotionally intense look at the world through the eyes of a man experiencing memory loss.
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
by Oscar Wilde, adapted by Constance Cox
20 to 29 September 2018
Oscar Wilde’s short story has been amusingly brought to the stage in Constance Cox’s witty adaptation. Fashionable young man-about-town, Lord Arthur Savile, has not a care in the world except for the planning of his wedding to the lovely Sybil Merton. And then the fortune-telling Mr Podgers disrupts his life by informing him that he is destined to murder someone. Can he really marry Sybil before he commits this crime? Can a victim be found before the wedding day? Who can he possibly ‘do in’? Can he get away with it?