Everyman & Playhouse Set Spring 2016 Season

The Everyman & Playhouse's 2016 spring season will feature love, loyalty, betrayal, oppression, transcendence, motherhood, brotherhood, tragedy and comedy. Gemma Bodinetz will direct a new adaptation of Madame Bovary with Peepolykus at the Everyman, while at the Playhouse there will be a major revival of Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. There are also partnerships with National Theatre of Scotland and Told By An Idiot on I Am Thomas, and DaDaFest and Turf Love for Unsung, a new production about Liverpool radical Edward Rushton.

Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz kick-starts the year with The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary! in which Gustave Flaubert's seminal Nineteenth Century novel is lovingly derailed by John Nicholson and Javier Marzan of Peepolykus. Following its premiere at the Everyman from 5 to 27 February the production moves to co-producing partners Bristol Old Vic, Nuffield and Royal & Derngate, Northampton. Played by a cast of just five - with a fair amount of doubling - this adaptation will be an absurd take on the classic tale. There will be vermin, visual absurdity, wild animals and a nun.

At the Playhouse from 8 to 25 June, Jeremy Herrin, Artistic Director of Headlong, directs Frank McGuinness's iconic war play Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. On 1 July 1916, the 36th (Ulster) Division took part in one of the bloodiest battles in human history: the Battle of the Somme. 100 years later this modern classic is presented by the Everyman & Playhouse in a major co-production with the Abbey Theatre, Dublin - where the play debuted in 1985 - the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow and Headlong. Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme is supported by the British Irish Chamber of Commerce.

Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz said: "We feel this is a particularly rich season of work, which sees us collaborating with and receiving work from many of our favourite and most ambitious companies. It is a season with a particularly theatrical flavour where music and physical invention feature prominently."

"We are thrilled to be co-producing with the Abbey Theatre for the first time along with our partners Headlong and Citizens Theatre on this landmark production of Frank McGuinness's Observe The Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme and it is a personal joy to be directing our co-production with Bristol, Southampton and Northampton of Peepolykus' anarchic adaptation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary at the Everyman which will then tour the country."

The E&P will also support the launch of some ambitious new productions in 2016. Told By An Idiot's I Am Thomas will premiere at the Playhouse before touring. Co-produced by National Theatre Scotland and Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, this wildly comic and provocative piece of music theatre about the last person in Britain to be executed for blasphemy is created in collaboration with poet and playwright Simon Armitage. Unsung is the story of a lesser-known Liverpool hero, Edward Rushton: an abolitionist, poet and human rights campaigner. The production, at the Everyman in March, is written by Turf Love's John Graham Davies and commissioned by DaDaFest.

Young Everyman Playhouse will return to the Everyman stage with two productions in the Spring. Environmentalists will be a large ensemble piece devised by the company, fired by the idea that the world is dying, and we're ignoring it. Following the success of Until They Kick Us Out, YEP's take on politics, expect an unexpected take on the environment. Later in the year YEP will present Quantum, a play about space, quantum physics and our place in the universe.

The Playhouse Studio has established itself as the perfect space for intimate storytelling and will host two productions in the Spring. Associate Director Nick Bagnall directs I Am Not Myself These Days, a witty and moving tale of love and self-discovery set amidst the excesses of 1990s New York, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015. Studio favourites Theatre503 return with a play about a mining town in Wales in the 1970s, Land of Our Fathers, Chris Urch's critically acclaimed debut play is packed full of blistering comedy and echoes a generation of lost voices.

There is a range of well-known work which is sure to ignite the imaginations of younger audiences. Leicester Curve's production of The Witches is at the Playhouse in March with YEP graduate Kieran Urqhuart among the cast members. Regent's Park Theatre's acclaimed production of Lord of the Flies opens the Playhouse season in February, while Michael Rosen's award-winning book We're Going On A Bear Hunt is brought vividly to the stage in March.

There will be a wealth of comedy at both venues. Christmas 2009's smash hit The 39 Steps, Alfred Hitchcock's classic spy thriller turned into hilarious comedy by Patrick Barlow, returns for one week only at the Playhouse along with a one-night performance by Mark Thomas of his show Trespass carrying on from where 100 Acts of Minor Dissent left off. Industrious comedy innovators The Invisible Dot Ltd bring an incredible variety show to the Playhouse with acts including Paul Foot and The Boy with Tape on his Face, while Bridget Christie brings her show, A Book for Her, to the Everyman.

Eclipse Theatre Company are at the Playhouse in February with A Raisin in the Sun, a ferocious portrayal of working class life on the cusp of the civil rights era. Opera comes from Liverpool-born composer Mark Simpson's new production, Pleasure, in a co-production by The Royal Opera House, Aldeburgh Music and Opera North. The production, set in a hedonistic gay club, stars Lesley Garrett. English Touring Theatre return with The Herbal Bed, a play about the affairs of Shakespeare's daughter, directed by James Dacre. In May Barrie Rutter plays Sir John Falstaff in Northern Broadsides' The Merry Wives.

At the Everyman Sherman Cymru present Iphigenia In Splott, Winner of the UK Theatre Award for Best New play 2015 and The Corn Exchange, Ireland present a stage adaptation of Eimear McBride's award winning novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, for which performers won the Stage Award For Acting Excellence at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015.

Tickets will be on public sale from Tuesday 1 December except for Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme which will be on sale in Spring 2016.

To post a comment, you must register and login.