SPUTNIK SWEETHEART, Max Wilkinson's UNION and More Set For Arcola Theatre's Summer/Autumn 2023 Lineup

With their production of Sasha Hails’ Possession about to open at the company’s home base, Arcola Theatre, led by Artistic Director Mehmet Ergen and Executive Director Leyla Nazli, has announced their new season.

In Studio 1, the season opens with Sputnik Sweetheart, adapted from Haruki Murakami’s much-loved novel, by award-winning playwright Bryony Lavery, and directed by Melly Still. The production sees Lavery and Still reunite after the successful tour of The Lovely Bones.

The season in Studio 2 opens with Max Wilkinson’s Union, which follows hit play Rainer which played at the Arcola last summer - Wiebke Green returns to the theatre to direct. This is followed by Hannah Kumari’s critically acclaimed ENG-ER-LAND – directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair, which comes to the venue after a smash-hit UK tour.

Continuing the season in Studio 2 are Freek Mariën’s award-winning The Wetsuitman; Matthew Seager’s In Other Words, and Gentlemen which sees playwright Matt Parvin and director Richard Speir return to the theatre with a blistering new comic drama.

Political comedian Mark Thomas brings Ed Edwards’ England & Son to the theatre in November – marking a first for Thomas, the first play he has performed in that he hasn’t written himself. Completing the season is Aoife Kennan’s Scratches, an honest, funny, and creative observation on self-harm.

Mehmet Ergen said today, “It is an absolute joy to be bringing a new season of work to the Arcola Theatre for the remainder of 2023. This season features a variety of new plays, adaptations of cult classics and returns of much-loved productions, all at London’s most accessible price point. We can’t wait to welcome audiences to what looks to be a very exciting time at Arcola Theatre.”

STUDIO 1

Arcola Theatre presents in partnership with the JAPAN Foundation

Haruki Murakami’s

SPUTNIK SWEETHEART

Adapted for stage by Bryony Lavery

Directed by Melly Still

23 October - 25 November

Press night: 30 October at 7pm

Haruki Murakami’s much loved novel Sputnik Sweetheart has been adapted for the stage for the first time in history, by none other than celebrated playwright Bryony Lavery (Tony nominee for Frozen, adaptor of The Book of Dust - La Belle Sauvage).

Melly Still (Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, My Brilliant Friend, and the Olivier and Tony nominated Coram Boy) steers this coming-of-age play from cosy coffee shops in Tokyo all the way to the salty beaches of Greece, as we follow one young man on his mission to find his missing best friend, Sumire.

But Sumire is not a damsel in distress. She is bold, she is creative, passionate and headstrong. She’s curiously obsessed with modelling herself in the image of Jack Kerouac, and more than anything, she’s desperately head-over-heels in love with her muse, Miu.

Sputnik Sweetheart is a tale about pining, not just for the person you love, but for the person you wish you were. It’s about finding love in its most beautiful, perplexing form.

Supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.

Bryony Lavery’s play Frozen, won TMA Best Play Award, the Eileen Anderson Central Television Award and was produced on Broadway where it was nominated for four Tony Awards, and most recently in the West End at Theatre Royal Haymarket.  She has collaborated three times with Frantic Assembly on Stockholm - which won the Wolff-Whiting award for best play of 2008, Beautiful Burnout Fringe First award at Edinburgh Festival, before touring the UK, New York, Australia and New Zealand; and most recently The Believers. Other work includes The Book of Dust - La Belle Sauvage (Bridge Theatre), Queen Coal (Sheffield Theatres), The Lovely Bones (Birmingham Rep and UK tour), The Midnight Gang (Chichester Festival Theatre), The Borrowers (Storyhouse), Brighton Rock (Pilot Theatre), Last Easter, Kursk - with Sound and Fury at the Young Vic and Sydney Opera House;  A Christmas Carol (Chichester, Birmingham and West Yorkshire Playhouse), Thursday (ETT/Brink in Adelaide and Canberra), Dirt (Studio Theater, Washington DC - nominated for Best New Play, Helen Hayes Award), A Doll's House (Manchester Royal Exchange), Her Aching Heart and A Wedding Story. She is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature, an honorary Doctor of Arts at De Montfort University and an Associate Artist at Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

Melly Still directs. Her other credits include Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (UK tour), the world première of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d (UK tour) My Brilliant Friend (Rose Theatre Kingston and National Theatre), The Lovely Bones (UK tour), Cymbeline (RSC), The Haunting of Hill House (Sonia Friedman Productions, Hammer and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse), Life Raft (Bristol Old Vic), Coram Boy (National Theatre/Broadway - for which she was a Tony Award nominee for Best Director), From Morning Till Midnight, Nation, The Revenger’s Tragedy (National Theatre), Rats’ Tales (Manchester Royal Exchange), Beasts and Beauties (Hampstead Theatre) and Tiger Bay the Musical (Wales Millennium Centre).  Her opera directing work includes The Cunning Little Vixen and Rusalka (Glyndebourne) and Zaide (Sadler’s Wells).

STUDIO 2

Presented by Anarchy Division, Rua Arts & Velenzia Spearpoint 

UNION

Written by Max Wilkinson

Directed by Wiebke Green

19 July - 12 August

Press Night: Tuesday 25 July at 7pm

‘The city is sweet and summered and partly asleep. The city is angry.

And tonight: one of us is going to die.’

On the eve of the biggest deal of her career, Saskia, an uber-successful property developer runs from the meeting, all the way home down the Grand Union Canal.

Plagued by phone calls and ghosts, she meets a myriad of characters looking to make or break her. She realises, as her shiny life unravels, that she doesn’t know herself anymore or the city she once loved. Can she still save a little piece of it?

Union is a wildly hilarious odyssey through London, in all its brilliant, booze-soaked, yuppified, but still punk, glory. Just as Saskia fears she is losing her own soul to greed, it’s about the fear that London is losing that same battle but is still defined by a beautiful beating heart and the people who live in it. Born from creative workshops led for several years by Max with local communities across London, Union is a black comedy, a love letter and a passionate call to arms.

Union follows Max Wilkinson’s hit play Rainer which played at the Arcola last summer. His other works includes 100 Ways the Fire Starts (Theatre503, Old Red Lion), Ghost Fruit (Camden People’s Theatre), Hong Kong City (King’s Head Theatre), Wannsee (Bridewell Theatre, Courtyard Theatre), and Tom, Charlie, Jerry and Fritz (Central Saint Martins).

Wiebke Green directs. Her credits include In the Forest of Starlight and Shrapnel (RWCMD Festival at The Yard), Julius Caesar (LSDA), The Poltergeist (Arcola Theatre and Southwark Playhouse - livestream), Tarantula (Southwark Playhouse), The Beast Will Rise (The New Normal Festival), Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands (Vault Festival), Sadness and Joy in the Life of Giraffes (Orange Tree Theatre), Heather’s Wedding, What’s Left After All That is the Silent Hum? (Theatre503), Everything You Ever Needed to Know About Ants (Bunker Theatre), The Comedy of Errors (Shaw Theatre), and Shivered (The Garage Theatre).

Hannah Kumari and Daljinder Johal present

ENG-ER-LAND

Written and performed by Hannah Kumari

Directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair

15 - 19 August

'Walking up to Highfield Road for the first time was mind blowing. Seeing all the other people with their shirts and scarfs, feeling like you’re part of that, feeling that excitement in the air.'

After a successful tour to over 30 venues in 2022, which as well as traditional theatre spaces included The National Football Museum, and Accrington Stanley FC, Hannah Kumari brings her acclaimed solo show back for one final public run, to coincide with the Women's World Cup.

ENG-ER-LAND premièred at Jermyn Street Theatre as a work in progress in June 2021, as part of their Footprints Festival, when Kumari was Creative Associate at the Theatre.

Hannah Kumari is a writer, performer, producer & director from Warwickshire, now based between London and Bristol. She writes about mixed heritage identity, addiction and the intersection between class and race, often through the lens of football. Hannah’s debut short film Devi – देवी which she wrote and stars in alongside Nina Wadia and Jonny Fines was broadcast on Sky Arts in May 2022, as part of Coventry’s ‘City of Culture’ year. ENG-ER-LAND was nominated for Best Stage Production at the 2022 Asian Media Awards and Hannah has been invited on to BBC Newsnight, BBC Squad Goals, Talk Sport: The Hawksbee and Jacob Show, Talk Radio with Bob Mills, BBC Sportshour and numerous podcasts to speak about the show.

Rikki Beadle-Blair is a writer, director, composer, choreographer, designer, producer and performer working in film, theatre, television and radio. Having written and directed 40 plays over the last 20 years along with several feature films, shorts and TV episodes and series, he has won several awards including the Sony Award, the Los Angeles Outfest Screenwriting and Outstanding Achievement awards. Beadle-Blair’s passion for encouraging creativity and business sense in others has made him a committed and effective mentor to many writers, actors, composers and directors around the world.

The original tour of ENG-ER-LAND was co-produced by Hannah Kumari and WoLab and funded by Arts Council England and The Football Supporters’ Association.

Foreign Affairs present

THE WETSUITMAN

Written by Freek Mariën, Translated by David McKay

Directed by Trine Garrett

29 August - 2 September

“How can you be a missing person, when officially you’re not even here?”

Three actors, twenty-eight characters, one true story.

It’s 2015 on the coast of Norway. A retired architect finds a wetsuit, and in it, The Remains of a body. The detective unit hits one dead end after another – until another body in an identical wetsuit washes up in the Netherlands.

Starting as a Nordic noir, The Wetsuitman playfully and movingly transforms into an exploration of identity, prejudice and forced migration. As one journalist digs deeper into the story behind The Wetsuitman, it becomes an interrogation of the world in which he was washed up and exactly how that could happen.

This timely and important play by award-winning Belgian playwright Freek Mariën takes us on a journey from Norway, through Europe, and to Syria, revealing the devastating truth behind one family's loss.

Freek Mariën is an author and a theatremaker. He and Carl von Winckelmann are the artistic leaders of the theatre ensemble Het Kwartier, mounting productions for young people and adults that emphasize powerful writing, socially relevant topics, and unexpected forms and themes. He has written for ensembles including ARSENAAL/LAZARUS, Circus Ronaldo, Tuning People, and Laika. Freek has won awards including the Dutch-German Kinder-und Jugenddramatiker innenpreises 2012 and 2020 for plays for young people, the East Flanders Literary Prize 2014, and the Toneelschrijfprijs for the best Dutch-language play (winner in 2015, nominated in 2017 and 2019). His writing has been translated into German, French, Finnish, and English, with public readings and performances in various European countries and the United States.

Trine Garrett directs. In 2010, she co-founded Foreign Affairs, an international theatre company based in East London, with Brazilian actor/producer Camila França. Her recent credits include Where I Call Home, The Warmhouse and The Unburied, The Saint of Darkness.

Presented by arrangement with IPR Ltd, London. Made possible with support from Arts Council England, Flanders Ministry of Culture, Flanders Literature (translation), the Diplomatic Representation of Flanders, the Royal Victoria Hall Foundation and Mill Co. and Rose Lipman Building.

TBC Productions present

IN OTHER WORDS

Written by Matthew Seager

Directed by Andy Routledge

5 - 30 September

Press Night: Thursday 7 September at 7pm

They call it ‘the incident’ now. What happened when they first met. He always said it was part of his ‘romantic plan’, but they both know that’s rubbish.

Connected by the music of Frank Sinatra, this intimate, humorous and deeply moving love story explores the effects of Alzheimer’s disease and the transformative power of music to help us remember the past, connect with the present and hope for the future.

In Other Words is the English language original of the four times Molière Award winning, critically acclaimed phenomenon, Oublie Moi.

Matthew Seager is a performer, writer, and co-founder of newly formed TBC Productions. In Other Words is his first play. Since 2017 the English Language production has toured the UK, been recorded digitally, and performed by companies in Scotland and Malta. Following sold out runs in Avignon and Paris, the French language adaptation Oublie Moi won four Molière Awards including Best Play, and is also under option to be made into a feature film. In Other Words is currently being translated into multiple languages for upcoming productions across the world. Other recent writing credits include work with theatre and dementia charity The Dot Collective on their production of Elves and the Shoemaker, and podcast series A Map To You.

Andy Routledge directs. In 2022 he was shortlisted for the RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award. He has created work with Royal & Derngate Theatre Northampton, Theatre by the Lake, Royal Exchange, Curve, HOME, Vault Festival, and regularly direct projects at drama schools and universities. He was previously the trainee director at Manchester’s Royal Exchange. He is the founder and artistic director of 60 Miles by Road or Rail - an arts, heritage and community initiative in his hometown of Northampton; Resident Director for Directors Charitable Foundation, United Learning’s Get Directing! Programme; and an Associate Artist for National Youth Theatre.

Richard Speir in association with Arcola Theatre presents

GENTLEMEN

Written by Matt Parvin

Directed by Richard Speir

4 - 28 October

Press Night: 9 October at 7pm

Matt Parvin’s blistering new drama tests the limits of retribution and the power of social status at university.

“You’ve got to throw yourself in, yeah? Do you see?

Have to throw yourself right in, whatever that entails.”

Freshers’ term. Greg has taken to university life like a duck to water. Kasper is struggling to fit in.

Summoned to a mediation session with Kasper and the college welfare officer to discuss an accusation of plagiarism, Greg deftly argues his way out of trouble. But when the allegations evolve into something altogether more damaging, how long can Greg remain untouchable?

Gentlemen examines what happens when culture turns toxic, and how a fear of not fitting in risks everyone losing out.

The production sees both Parvin and Spier return to the Arcola.

Matt Parvin's previous work for Arcola includes Alice in Wonderland. He also trained as part of the Arcola Theatre Writer’s Programme. His other plays include The Noble Nine, Two Roads (VAULT Festival), Cousins (Soho Theatre), and Jam (Finborough Theatre). Jam was published by Oberon Books, and Matt received an Off West End Awards nomination for Most Promising Playwright.

Richard Speir is a winner of this year’s John Fernald Award for directors. Previous work at Arcola includes Spun (2018) and Broken Lad (2021). Other work includes Byron: Angel & Outcast with Sir Simon Russell Beale (Cadogan Hall), Claw Hammer (SparkHaus); Moments (Hen and Chickens); Stevie (SLAM); Deadlock, The Nine 0’Clock Service (Theatre 503); Play 2, Breakneck (Old Red Lion); The Inevitable disappearance of Edward J. Neverwhere (Star); Checkout (Miniaturists).

HOME, Manchester and Tin Cat Entertainment present

ENGLAND & SON

Written by Ed Edwards

Performed by Mark Thomas

Directed by Cressida Brown

14- 25 November

Press Night: Wednesday 15 November at 7pm

“A nation that devours another will one day devour itself.”

Set when The Great Devouring comes home, England & Son is a one-man play written specifically for the award-winning political comedian Mark Thomas by award-winning playwright Ed Edwards (The Political History of Smack and Crack - Paines Plough's Roundabout, Soho and UK tour).

With some deep, dark laughs - and some deep, dark love - along the way, England & Son emerges from characters Mark knew in his childhood and Ed's lived experience in jail. Prepare to be taken on a kaleidoscopic odyssey where disaster capitalism, empire, stolen youth and stolen wealth merge into the simple tale of a working-class boy who just wants his dad to smile at him.

Ed Edwards wrote and had published his first two novels while serving a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for drug offences. Many years clean now, Ed went on to write for Brookside, The Bill and Holby City, as well writing short films for BBC 2 and Channel 4. His most recent stage play The Political History of Smack and Crack won a Lustrum Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, toured nationally and is currently in pre-production as an animated feature film. Ed is co-artistic director (with fellow writer and actor Eve Steele) of Most Wanted, a theatre and film production company based in Manchester, concentrating on work grounded in their joint lived experience of addiction and crime. Through Most Wanted, Ed directed Eve Steele’s hit theatre show Life By The Throat and co-directed the feature film Scrambled, currently in post-production.

Mark Thomas has been a performer for 37 years; in his career he has had a TV show that changed the law, exposed corporate wrongdoing, and put gun runners in jail. He has written plays, books, and radio shows. He has awards ranging from four Fringe Firsts to a UN Association Global Human Rights.

Cressida Brown directs. Her credits include The Tempest (RADA), The Political History of Smack and Crack (UK tour), Sticks and Stones (Central School of Speech and Drama), Blue (HighTide), Macbeth (Shakespeare’s Globe), Earthquakes in London (Bristol Old Vic), Citz Writes (Cardboard Citizens and Theatre503), Icarus, Septimus Beam and His Amazing Machine (Unicorn Theatre), Twelfth Night (RSC and Guangzhou Dramatic Arts Centre), The Words are Coming Now (Theatre503), Almost, Not Quite (Kiln Theatre), Vinegar Tom (RADA), and The Journey (Bush Theatre).

Plain Heroines present

SCRATCHES

Written by Aoife Kennan

Directed by Gabriella Bird

6 - 11 November

A funny and honest new play about self-harm and recovery.

“So, I have to grab a pair of socks off the dryer and put them on so they can kind of soak up the blood and hide my ankles... I said I was wearing the socks because if your feet are warm, you’re more likely to org*sm. Which is true, by the way.”

Meet GIRL. For too long, she’s been hiding her scratches with unfashionably long socks, clever white lies, and period pads. But now she and her fabulous BEST FRIEND are here to set the record straight.

SCRATCHES is a story of the events that shape us. It’s about self-harm, recovery and reaching out to friends. It’s about talking through the hard stuff, but with stand-up, cabaret, and confetti. So much confetti.

Aoife Kennan is an actor and writer. She has developed work through the Royal Court Writers Programme, Masterclass Script Sessions and most recently the Sky Comedy Rep programme with Sky Studios and the Birmingham Rep. Her play, SCRATCHES, was nominated for an Offie and a VAULT Festival Award. Her performance work includes The 4th Country (Park Theatre), C-O-N-T-A-C-T (Aria Entertainment), Victoria (ITV) and the feature film, Blue Jean (BBC/BFI).

Gabriella Bird directs. She is a theatre director and dramaturg who trained with Katie Mitchell, as well as with the Young Vic Directors' Programme and was Apprentice at Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in 2011-2012. From 2020-21 she was a Creative Associate at Jermyn Street Theatre and is currently working with the British Youth Opera. In 2016 she co-founded theatre company Plain Heroines whose recent productions SCRATCHES was nominated for an Offie and VAULT Festival Award and their premier production Madwomen in the Attic was shortlisted for the Eddies' Award, and the NSDF award. As Associate Director she has worked both nationally and internationally at theatres including Sheffield Crucible, Theatre by the Lake, English Theatre Frankfurt, Deutsches Theater Munich and Jermyn Street Theatre.

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