Stockard Channing Will Direct KRAPP'S LAST TAPE at Latitude Festival

Latitude Festival has added another wave of theatre to its twentieth edition, taking place at Henham Park, Suffolk from 23 to 26 July 2026. Led by a production of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape directed by Stockard Channing, star of Grease and The West Wing, the new additions run from one of the great one-act plays of the twentieth century to the most anarchic cabaret on the British stage, capturing the breadth that has defined Latitude's theatre programme for two decades. Final tickets are on sale now at latitudefestival.com/tickets.

Melvin Benn, Festival Founder and Director, said: "When we started Latitude, people thought theatre in a field was a novelty. Twenty years on, Stockard Channing is directing Beckett at Henham Park, and RashDash, a company we commissioned when they were starting out, are back at Latitude to launch their comeback. That is what this festival was built to do: take theatre as seriously as the headliners,back artists early and invite the fringe to the mainstream. I cannot wait to welcome everyone to Henham in July."

Samuel Beckett's masterpiece Krapp's Last Tape, presented by Assembly, comes to Henham Park in a production directed by Stockard Channing in her directorial debut. One of the most celebrated actresses of her generation, Channing has received eight Tony Award nominations, winning Best Actress in a Play for A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, three Emmy Awards including for First Lady Abbey Bartlet in The West Wing, and Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Six Degrees of Separation, having originated the role of Ouisa Kittredge on Broadway and in the West End. To generations of film fans she is Rizzo in Grease, and this September she reprises her role in Practical Magic 2 alongside Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.

Playing Krapp is her great friend David Westhead, a leading actor with the Royal Court, The National Theatre and the RSC, who created the roles of Mickey in the original Mojo and Rochester in The Libertine, with screen credits including W1A, Bodyguard, Enola Holmes and Star Wars. The two met filming Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister in 2000 and became each other's bubble during lockdown, before rehearsing Beckett's 50-minute masterpiece in Channing's kitchen. Outrageous, relatable, heartbreaking and a tribute to the vaudeville that exists in Beckett, the play finds Krapp, a 69-year-old man surrounded by the detritus of his life, listening to the ghostly voice of his younger self on his old tape recordings. The production plays Latitude before its run with Assembly at Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August, with all profits going to The Wembley to Soweto Foundation, the charity founded by Westhead providing photographic training and life-skills to disadvantaged young people around the world.

David Westhead said: "We've played some extraordinary places with this show, from disused wine factories to derelict ballrooms, from underground quarries to decommissioned prisons, but an iconic music festival - never!!! Finally, everything comes together before our Edinburgh debut: KRAPPITUDE!!!"

Stockard Channing said: "David assured me we'd only play his pal's arts centre for the charity, and now we are taking it to Latitude and then Edinburgh for Wembley To Soweto! I don't think he will mind too much if I assert that David Westhead is truly Krapp. Talk about Theatre of the Absurd."

RashDash, the multi Fringe First award-winning trio behind Two Man Show and Three Sisters, return with There Were Goddesses, performing songs from their playful, anarchic body of work as they soft-launch their comeback. The booking is a homecoming: Latitude co-commissioned the company's early outdoor shows The Frenzy and Set Fire To Everything!!!, and they last played Henham Park in 2018 with a festival-special edition of their gig-Theatre Three Sisters, after Chekhov, complete with electric guitars. Hailed by The Guardian as "the punk princesses of late night theatre", Abbi Greenland and Helen Goalen have spent more than a decade making some of the most thrilling feminist gig-theatre in the country, and There Were Goddesses finds them singing for their lives, absolutely not struggling with mid-career life and motherhood, in a wry celebration of the UK's thriving cultural landscape.

Lucy McCormick, the reigning queen of alternative cabaret, brings her acclaimed show Lucy & Friends to the Theatre Arena. Conceived as a spectacular ensemble piece, the funding never came through, so Lucy is going it alone, and the audience become the friends: mum, agent, reviewer, torch operator and backing choir. A riot of song, chaos, confetti and confession from the star of Emma Rice's Wuthering Heights and the RSC's Cowbois, Lucy & Friends earned five-star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe and Soho Theatre, and arrives at Henham Park as one of the most talked-about live shows in the country. Expect mess. Expect participation. Expect nothing to go the way you think it will.

In Bed With My Brother bring their cult hit We Are Ian to Suffolk. It is 1989. Acid house is sweeping Manchester, and Ian is at the centre of it. Guided by the real recorded voice of their mate Ian, a former DJ from Rochdale represented on stage by a single flickering lightbulb, the trio recreate the second summer of love in an hour of strobe, beats, biscuits and pure abandon. Nominated for the Total Theatre Emerging Company Award at its Edinburgh debut, We Are Ian has since toured the world from Hong Kong to Australia. Part gig, part history lesson, part rave, it is an invitation to dance like it is 1989, and audiences never refuse.

From the Lips to the Moon, the experimental music and poetry night created by British-Iranian electronic musician Pouya Ehsaei and performer and writer Tara Fatehi, makes its Latitude debut. A driving force in London's experimental performance scene since 2022, with shows at the Southbank Centre, the V&A and Cafe OTO, each performance is a long-form live improvisation weaving electronics, twisted beats, heavy subs and performative poetry into what its creators call non-stories told in goosebumps and half-familiar languages. Following the release of their debut album on Akazib Records this year, no two shows are ever the same, and the Henham Park edition will exist only once.

These shows join a Theatre Arena bill that already includes The Place: Anatomy of Survival,Circus Zambia & Wake the Beast's much talked aboutAfronauts, a preview screening of David Byrne's American Utopia, and Wright & Grainger's Orpheus and Eurydice, while Charlie Mackesy OBE, the Oscar-winning artist and author of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, returns with his celebrated live show of drawing and conversation.

The theatre additions join a 20th anniversary programme led by David Byrne, Lewis Capaldi and Teddy Swims, with comedy from Jack Dee, Ross Noble, Jen Brister, Lenny Henry and Rosie Jones, dance from BalletBoyz, celebrating their own twenty-fifth anniversary, plus a literary and poetry programme featuring Dr John Cooper Clarke, Inua Ellams and a rare in-conversation with Sir Matthew Bourne.

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