Sian Phillips, Michael Pennington, Oliver Ford Davis & Stephen Boxer Lead Autumn Season at the Jermyn Street Theatre

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.

The season kicks off with the previously announced Relatively Speaking by Alan Ayckbourn, which runs from 15 September to 9 October. Directed by Robin Herford and starring Christopher Bonwell, Rachel Fielding, Lianne Harvey and James Simmons, The Mill at Sonning co-production is an enduringly funny comedy of mistaken identities and excruciating misunderstandings. Greg only met Ginny a month ago, but he knows they're meant for each other. When she announces that she's going to visit her parents, Greg decides this is the moment to ask her father for his daughter's hand. Discovering a scribbled address, he follows her to Buckinghamshire where he finds Philip and Sheila enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning breakfast in the garden, but the only thing is - they're not Ginny's parents.

Relatively Speaking is followed by Ben Brown's A Splinter of Ice, which runs from 14 October to 30 October. Set in Moscow in 1987. As the Cold War begins to thaw, one of the great novelists of the twentieth century, Graham Greene, meets his old MI6 boss and notorious Soviet spy, Kim Philby. The two men raise their vodka glasses and talk about old times. How much did Greene know about Philby's ways? Did the Red Spy betray his old friend as much as he did his own country? And who is listening in the room next door...?

A Splinter of Ice arrives after an acclaimed national tour. Ben Brown's (Three Days in May) political drama is directed by Alan Strachan with Alastair Whatley, and stars Olivier Award winner Oliver Ford Davies (Game of Thrones) as Graham Greene, Stephen Boxer (The Crown) as Kim Philby, with Karen Ascoe as his wife Rufa.

Following Beckett's All That Fall and the Beckett Triple Bill, Jermyn Street Theatre has a history of staging Samuel Beckett's work, and this autumn the theatre uncovers two more of his rarely performed gems. Multi award-winning Dame Siân Phillips (I, Claudius, Under Milk Wood) and Charlotte Emmerson (Food of Love, The Cherry Orchard) are directed by Richard Beecham in an unmissable double bill of Footfalls & Rockaby which runs from 3 November to 20 November.

A rocking chair creaks. Footsteps echo down a corridor, tracing and retracing the same path. An old woman hears a voice from beyond - a voice that sounds eerily like her own. In this pair of miniature masterpieces, Beckett dazzlingly explores his obsessions with age, memory, and the passing of time.

Rounding off the season where Jermyn Street Theatre left off before the first lockdown eighteen months ago, Michael Pennington one of the foremost Shakespearean actors of his generation returns to the theatre to don Prospero's cloak once more. Artistic Director Tom Littler's production of The Tempest opened in March 2020 to critical acclaim but was cut short after just six performances. It sails again from 25 November through to 22 December with the original cast reunited for a magical voyage.

Artistic Director Tom Littler said: "When The Tempest's Miranda encounters other humans for the first time she cries: 'Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!' We've built the Encounters Season around that moment of meeting - contrasting figures in an English garden, in a Moscow flat, in a dark house, on a remote island - coming face to face and trying to understand each other. Programming and producing are more of a challenge than ever, and the lack of insurance leave us vulnerable. But we are very excited to be announcing this season of four brilliant plays featuring some of our finest actors, and I look forward to reuniting with the company of The Tempest to continue our interrupted journey."

The theatre also confirmed it will be keeping its requirement for audiences to remain masked throughout performances, and announced that it will host a series of socially distanced performances on Monday nights. Plans for streamed versions of some of the productions will be announced in due course.

Jermyn Street Theatre is the West End's smallest producing theatre. The Stage's Fringe Theatre of the Year 2021, it is led by Artistic and Executive Directors Tom Littler and Penny Horner. The programme includes outstanding new plays, rare revivals, new versions of European classics, and high-quality musicals, alongside one-off musical and literary events. It collaborates with theatres across the world, and its productions have transferred to the West End and Broadway. Its 2020 had begun with acclaimed, sold-out productions of a Beckett Triple Bill directed by Trevor Nunn, and The Tempest directed by Tom Littler. During closure, the theatre has responded with its Brave New World season of digital work, including the complete cycle of Shakespeare's sonnets performed by a mixture of graduating drama students and household names including Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Colman and the acclaimed 15 Heroines with DigitalTheatre+ featuring adaptations of Ovid from writers including Juliet Gilkes Romero and Timberlake Wertenbaker.

To post a comment, you must register and login.