Jermyn Street Theatre's Spring Season to Feature A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD, HOME FOR WAYWARD WOMEN & More

Having kicked off its 21st anniversary with an eclectic winter season, Jermyn Street Theatre today announces a season of new comedies that will carry it forward through the spring and into the summer.

From 14th April to 6th May, as the general election campaign reaches its height and education is a hot topic, the schooling system comes under scrutiny in the world premiere of Jonathan Lewis's comedy A Level Playing Field directed by Chris Popert. In the music room of a top fee-paying London school, a group of 18-year-olds must sit out an hour of "isolation" to cover a clash of exams and avoid the risk of cheating. But their supervising teacher has failed to turn up. In dealing with the dilemmas of the situation, the pupils gradually reveal a darker side to the pressures they are under. An 11-strong teenage cast portray their own generation in this roller-coaster tale of hope, identity and shattered dreams. Jonathan Lewis's play Our Boys opened to universally good reviews in 1991 and had a West End revival in 2012 starring Laurence Fox and Arthur Darvill. His one-man show I Found My Horn was critically acclaimed when it opened in 2008. It toured the UK, had a run at the Hampstead Theatre in November 2009, and then came to the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End in 2014.

Following A Level Playing Field, from 12th May to 6th June, Jermyn Street Theatre presents the world premiere of Stewart Pemutt's comedy Home for Wayward Women directed by Anthony Biggs. Retired psychiatrist Joy Westendarp has opened up her lovely home to women who have been rejected by the mental health system. Sixty-one year virgin and newcomer Alice doesn't appear to have any problems, but she is bent on taking the place over. The promiscuous Suzy and manically religious Phyllis meanwhile are making a play for the new intern George: scrawny and pompous, he is the only available man. With the threat of a government inspection, Joy starts to lose a grip on the women and Alice stealthily starts to take over. Stewart Permutt is an award-winning dramatist. His play Real Babies Don't Cry won an Edinburgh Fringe First. Other works include Unsuspecting Susan starring Celia Imrie, which played at The King`s Head Theatre, East 59 Theatres Off-Broadway. Philadelphia and Stuttgart and Many Roads To Paradise at The Finborough Theatre and Jermyn Street Theatre.

Closing the season will be Told Look Younger, a provocative and frank and comedy about sex, love, friendship and growing old which runs from 9th June to 4th July and is written by Stephen Wyatt, directed by Sue Dunderdale and presented by Eldarin Yeong. Three encounters between three gay men in their early sixties in a restaurant where neither the menu nor the decor are ever the same. After years alone, following the death of his lover, Colin is planning to marry his nineteen year-old Turkish boyfriend. Is it love, lust or loneliness which drives him? And is Achmed simply a gold-digger in search of a UK passport. Whatever the truth, his two oldest friends are determined to stop him from taking the plunge though their own motives are far from clear. The relentlessly promiscuous Jeremy is in a thirty-year old relationship with a man he's only had sex with once in the last decade. While the celibate Oliver secretly fancies his graduate students and immerses himself in his unending research project on Cardinal Newman. This is the start for an emotional rollercoaster, which turns all their lives and assumptions upside down and inside out as they bitch, argue, confide, laugh and cry their way through the seasons and the changing dishes of the day. The play offers a funny, tough and moving insight into the lives of older gay men in particular and all older friends in general. Stephen Wyatt is a multi-award winning playwright. He and Sue Dunderdale have worked together for many years since their first partnership at the Soho Theatre.

Anthony Biggs became Artistic Director of Jermyn Street Theatre in January 2013. His previous productions at the theatre include the recent Flowers of The Forest, The South African Season, The Potsdam Quartet, the UK premiere of Ibsen's St John's Night, Charles Morgan's The River Line, Ibsen's Little Eyolf and the revival of Frederick Lonsdale's On Approval.

Jermyn Street Theatre's current season has comprised James Hogan's Ivy and Joan, the current first ever revival of Edwardian playwright, St John Hankin's Last Of The De Mullins and the upcoming world premiere of Giles Coles drama The Heart of Things, which opens on March 14. The season builds on the theatre's other recent successes, which include the acclaimed production of Flowers of the Forest by John Van Drutten, the first ever revival of Terence Rattigan's debut work - First Episode, Maltby & Shire's Closer Than Ever, Arthur Wing Pinero's The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith, Steven Berkoff's Religion & Anarchy and William Inge's Natural Affection.

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