Theatre Royal Bath Productions Announces Three UK Premieres At The Ustinov Studio

Theatre Royal Bath Productions today announces three new premieres to open at the Ustinov Studio including Hansol Jung's Wild Goose Dreams which premieres next month (21 November to 21 December) with opening night for press on 27 November, Will Eno's Drama Desk Award winning play The Realistic Joneses (6 February to 7 March), followed by the latest drama from emerging playwright Kate Attwell, Testmatch (2 April to 9 May 2020), in a co-production with English Touring Theatre.

Wild Goose Dreams

Thursday 21 November - Saturday 21 December 2019
Press night: Wednesday 27 November, 7pm

Michael Boyd directs Hansol Jung's fascinating and unforgettable twenty-first century love story, Wild Goose Dreams which receives its UK premiere in the Ustinov Studio direct from an acclaimed off-Broadway run. The production stars Jessie Baek, Jon Chew, Rick Kiesewetter, London Kim, Vincent Lai, Chuja Seo, Momo Yeung and Crystal Yu.

Two lonely people from two divided cultures meet on an online dating site. Guk is a South Korean man whose wife and daughter have moved to America in search of a better life. Yoo is a young defector from North Korea, haunted by memories of the father she left behind. The would-be lovers struggle to find intimacy and genuine connection in a clamorous digital world where tenderness and touch have been replaced by likes and shares.

Featuring a chorus, music and a penguin, this is a lyrical, darkly humorous and extraordinarily original play.

Hansol Jung is a playwright and director from South Korea whose other works include Cardboard Piano, Among the Dead and No More Sad Things.

Michael Boyd was Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2002 to 2012. His recent productions include Tamburlaine for the RSC and The Open House, Right Now and The Big Meal at the Ustinov Studio.

Wild Goose Dreams is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH LTD, a Concord Theatricals Company.

The Realistic Joneses

Thursday 6 February - Saturday 7 March 2020
Press night: Wednesday 12 February 2020

The Realistic Joneses is a hilarious, quirky and touching portrait of marriage, life and squirrels, by American playwright Will Eno. Seen on Broadway in 2014, the play received a Drama Desk Special Award, was named one of the '25 best American plays since Angels in America' by the New York Times, Best Play on Broadway by USA Today and best American play of 2014 by the Guardian. Casting to be announced.

In a suburban backyard, one bucolic evening, Bob and Jennifer Jones and their new neighbours John and Pony Jones find they have more in common than their identical homes and last name. The couples are drawn to each other and their desperate attempts to connect evolve into a funny, intimate and profound meditation on life.

Will Eno's The Realistic Joneses marked his Broadway debut play in 2014. His other credits include The Open House, previously staged in the Ustinov Studio in 2017, and which was named in TIME Magazine and Time Out New York's Top Ten Plays, and Wakey, Wakey (Off-Broadway).

Director Simon Evans has worked at the Trafalgar Studios, The Donmar Warehouse, The National Theatre and the Bush where his recent credits include A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Will Eno's Thom Pain (based on nothing), Killer Joe, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and The Dazzle.

The Realistic Joneses is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH LTD, a Concord Theatricals Company.

Testmatch

Thursday 2 April - Saturday 9 May 2020
Press night: Wednesday 8 April 2020

Testmatch is a fast-paced, study of sport, gender politics and the legacy of colonialism. Filled with coruscating dialogue and blistering humour, it traverses both continents and centuries. This new drama by Kate Attwell, an exciting new voice in theatre, will receive its world premiere at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco this month. The play will have its UK premiere at the Ustinov Studio in April 2020, in a new production co-produced by Theatre Royal Bath Productions and English Touring Theatre whose recent visits to Bath include the critically acclaimed production of Equus. Casting and creative team will be announced in due course.

It makes the whole of western history make sense, this weather.
If I had to live in this, I'd get off this island as fast as I possibly could,
And take over whatever land I came across, because anything would be better.

Lord's, 2020. It's the Women's Cricket World Cup: England versus India. There's a rain delay. Stuck in the same locker room together, tensions mount, ambitions are laid bare and a whole new tactical game begins. Calcutta, 1800 (or thereabouts). Two British administrators in early 19th century India encounter challenges on the field of play that threaten the entire regime.

In this game of integrity and power, past and present collide. Kate Attwell's explosive UK premiere, Testmatch, confronts us with the hard hitting truths of colonialism and gender.

We're not going down without a fight.

Kate Attwell is a playwright, TV writer, and devised theater maker. She is an Ensemble Studio Theatre and Playwrights Horizons commissioned writer, and was a member of Ars Nova's PlayGroup, Page 73's writers' group, a Mabou Mines Resident Artist and a member of The Public Theater's Devised Theater Working Group. Recently her plays have been developed at Playwrights Horizons, A.C.T., Portland Center Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, and The Bushwick Starr. Previous shows have been seen at: REDCAT / Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (LA), The Public Theater (Under the Radar, 2016), JACK Arts, La MaMa E.T.C., Movement Research at Judson Church, BRIC, BAM (Everybooty), The Segal Center (Festival of Performance & Film), and The Wassaic Project. Her play, Testmatch, will premiere this season directed by Pam McKinnon at A.C.T. San Francisco, and at Yale Repertory Theatre directed by Margot Bordelon. She holds a BA in Performance from The University of Bristol in the UK and an MFA from Yale.

English Touring Theatre (ETT) is one of the UK's leading touring companies, winning the UK Theatre Awards Best Touring Production in 2014, 2015 and 2016. ETT works with exciting artists to stage an eclectic mix of new and classic work for audiences throughout the UK and internationally; theatre that is thrilling, popular and engaged in the contemporary world. ETT celebrates the diversity of the nation, creates connections between audiences nationally and places an examination of English identity at the heart of everything it does.

In 2019 ETT have produced a major revival of Equus by Peter Shaffer in a co-production with Theatre Royal Stratford East, directed by award winning director Ned Bennett which ran in the West End after its UK tour; the world premiere of Cougar by Rose Lewenstein, directed by Chelsea Walker in a co-production with the Orange Tree Theatre; The Funeral Director by Iman Qureshi, winner of the 2018 PAPAtango award; and Richard Twyman's production of Othello toured to Dubai Opera and The Great Theatre of China in Shanghai. This Autumn ETT are touring the first theatrical adaptation of Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig, in a co-production with Sheffield Theatres, and the Tony award winning play Two Trains Running by August Wilson, directed by RTST Sir Peter Hall award winner, Nancy Medina, in a co-production with Royal & Derngate Northampton.