Michael Pennington News

The Orange Tree Theatre today announces that it has appointed Tom Littler as the company's new Artistic Director. Currently Artistic Director and Executive Producer of the West End's Jermyn Street Theatre, Littler will succeed Paul Miller who is stepping down in December 2022 after more than eight years in post.

It was announced today that Taylor McClaine has been cast as the eponymous Orlando in acclaimed playwright, Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's time and gender shifting masterpiece to be staged at Jermyn Street Theatre this spring.

Today, Jermyn Street Theatre announces the casting for Edward Einhorn's breath-taking wedding farce, The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein.

Jermyn Street Theatre has announced the cast for the second production of its Outsiders Season, the world premiere of award-winning playwright Crystal Skillman's Rain and Zoe Save the World.

Jermyn Street Theatre has announced the cast of the opening production of its Outsiders Season, Stephen Dolginoff's Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story.

Oh, how life changes in 20 months. Not quite two years, not quite one and a half. In March 2020, artistic director of Jermyn Street Theatre Tom Littler teamed up with Michael Pennington to deliver Shakespeare’s swansong. That production played for six performances before closing down due to the  “unprecedented times” we’re still dealing with. It was this critic’s last show before theatres closed down and everything changed.

Today, Jermyn Street Theatre announces its Spring 2022 season. The Outsiders Season, which runs from mid-January to early July, features a World premiere by one of the UK's most respected playwrights, two European premieres, one London premiere and an eagerly awaited transfer of a critically praised musical thriller.

On November 25, Michael Pennington will pick up his staff and books and don his robes once more, to return to the Jermyn Street Theatre stage to play Prospero in this critically hailed production of Shakespeare’s final play. 

Today, Jermyn Street Theatre announces its first full season since it reopened with the Footprints Festival earlier this year.  The Encounters Season, which runs from mid-September to the end of the year, features some of the greatest on-stage talent in the UK, in a line-up that includes Sîan Phillips, Michael Pennington, Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer.

“So much pain was filled with happiness, at last!” There’s a reason why we call a lengthy, adverse journey “an odyssey”. In 24 books and over 12’000 lines Homer follows Odysseus, the “Master of plots and plans” and King of Ithaca, on his adventures after the decade-long Trojan War. Across another ten years while he was presumed dead, our hero saw all his crew-mates dying horrendous deaths. He was lured by sirens, killed a cyclops, and faced a series of horrible feats.

Jermyn Street Theatre has today announced casting for its marathon performance of Homer’s The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson. James Purefoy (Rome, Fisherman’s Friends, Churchill) stars as Odysseus, the Greek hero whose ten-year journey home from Troy is the heart of Homer’s epic poem.

Miranda Foster returns to Jermyn Street Theatre after her memorable roles in All's Well That Ends Well and Tonight at 8.30. Her previous work includes Hamlet (Globe to Globe World Tour), Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare's Globe),The Merry Wives of Windsor (BBC) and Festen (Bill Kenwright). 

That night, on an empty train home to Cambridge, I wondered when I would return to London. A fortnight? Six weeks? The answer was July. I also wondered how long it would be before an audience re-entered the Jermyn Street Theatre, the West End studio which I run. The answer was fourteen months.

Two weeks after announcing Footprints Festival, today Jermyn Street Theatre has unveiled its full programme of 43 shows brought together to celebrate the theatre’s reopening this Summer. Running for three months from May to August this jamboree of live work comprises an exciting combination of familiar faces and new talent.

Hot on the heels of the announcement of the cast of 15 Heroines, Jermyn Street Theatre, today reveals the complete line up of actors for its epic reading of The Odyssey.

From a Celtic warrior imprisoned on the banks of Stratford Upon Avon, to a plague ravaged town in Derbyshire via a sacred pagan site in West Cornwall, this new audio series invokes the hidden stories imprinted on ten different locations around the UK.

Stars of stage and screen including Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter, David Suchet, Dame Penelope Keith, Timothy West, Jamael Westman, Tobias Menzies, Aimee Lou Wood, Grace Saif, Dame Penelope Wilton, and Julie Hesmondhalgh have joined forces to perform Shakespeare's 154 sonnets for Jermyn Street Theatre, a 70-seat studio in London's West End.

Just after reaching its initial £10,000 target in a public fundraising campaign, Jermyn Street Theatre was severely flooded on Wednesday 8 April.

The closures of major shows, events and venues, in response to the Covid-19 outbreak, has left many people in the theatre industry suddenly without work or a project to develop. So, what are artists, creatives and theatre staff doing during the shutdown?

William Shakespeare's swansong lands on Jermyn Street Theatre's tiny stage in fetching fashion. Traditionally a grand spectacle, Tom Littler transforms The Tempest into boutique theatre at its finest. Shakespearean veteran Michael Pennington leads as Prospero, and the result is a myth-imbued and aesthetically exquisite show.