Paines Plough Reveals 2025 Programming

Paines Plough has announced its programming for 2025, with two new commissions set to tour the UK. This follows the company’s 50th anniversary fundraising gala at the Criterion Theatre earlier this month, which celebrated the company’s proud legacy of supporting bold new stories and storytellers, with their 50 for 50 campaign recementing its commitment to the next 50 years of new writing.

In a co-production with Belgrade Theatre, Sheffield Theatres and the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, Paines Plough presents Karis Kelly’s Consumed, directed by Paines Plough’s Joint Artistic Director Katie Posner. A twisted tale about generational trauma, family dynamics and national boundaries, Consumed takes place at a 90th birthday party where four generations of Northern Irish women reunite under one roof. Kelly won the Women’s Prize for Playwriting in 2021, and is also the recipient of the Peggy Ramsay/Film4 Award. In 2024, Karis was chosen to be part of the inaugural Women in Theatre Lab UK. Consumed will perform at Belgrade Theatre and Sheffield Theatres, with additional tour dates to be announced.

Returning to Paines Plough following the success of his acclaimed plays The Political History of Smack and Crack and England & Son, which had hit runs at Paines Plough’s Roundabout, is Ed Edwards with his new play Ordinary Decent Criminal. Edwards reunites with political comedian and actor Mark Thomas, who will play recovering addict Frankie as he enters the brave new world of a liberal prison experiment. Ordinary Decent Criminal previews at Live Theatre Newcastle, with further tour dates to be announced. A co-production between Paines Plough, Live Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth and Ellie Keel Productions in association with Synergy Theatre Project.

Joint Artistic Directors, Katie Posner and Charlotte Bennett commented, “It’s a massive pleasure to be bringing two new plays on tour this year with Paines Plough. They’re two pitch-black and hilarious stories of love and revolt. Both bring the conflicts of our past straight home to our present. Both go straight for the jugular. We’re so proud to be producing another Women’s Prize for Playwriting winner, this time bringing Karis Kelly’s gut-punching family saga out on tour. And alongside that, it’s a joy to reunite with writer Ed Edwards and legendary comedian Mark Thomas after their sell-out Roundabout hit ‘England & Son’, to bring a brand new decades-spanning story of prison and revolution to venues across the country, told in Mark's inimitable style. We can’t wait to get started and to tell you more.”

The new season of work follows the company’s award-winning play My Mother’s Funeral: The Show by Kelly Jones which concluded its award-winning critically-acclaimed tour in New York and London in February; the sell-out hit Every Brilliant Thingby Duncan MacMillan with Jonny Donahoe at last year’s Roundabout in Edinburgh; and the upcoming production Shanghai Dolls by Amy Ng, produced by Kiln Theatre in association with Paines Plough, to be directed by Katie Posner. The company will also enter the third year of its writer development programme, Tour the Writer, working in partnership with seven venues around the country to support writers in their local areas.

As part of Paines Plough’s 50 for 50 fundraising campaign, Paines Plough Patron James Graham has joined up with playwright Nick Payne to launch the Supporters Circle, with an aim to recruit 50 patrons to pledge their support for the company’s work for the next three years. 

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