The Watermill Theatre Announces Spring / Summer 2020

The Watermill Theatre today announces its new season for Spring 2020. The new programme draws on and develops The Watermill's long history of reinventing established musical theatre titles, daring ensemble Shakespeare productions and pertinent contemporary writing.

Highlights include world premieres of two British home-grown musicals. The eagerly anticipated The Wicker Husband by Darren Clark and Rhys Jennings is a folk inspired tale based on an original short story by Ursula Wills-Jones and has already won the Stiles and Drewe mentorship award. It was also selected as part of the National Alliance of Musical Theatre's annual festival of new musicals in New York last year. Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana is brought to life in a new musical adaptation by Ben Morales Frost and Richard Hough, based on the classic satire of the British intelligence services in fifties Cuba, set to a red-hot Latin score. Other new work is represented with Danielle Pearson's Camp Albion, a play which tells the story of 'The Third Battle of Newbury', a defining moment in the 1990s environmental movement that has very pertinent links to Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg.

Following their acclaimed production of Macbeth, which has just completed a national tour, The Watermill Ensemble takes a radical approach to Shakespeare with a female led production of Hamlet, co-directed by Watermill Theatre Artistic Director Paul Hart and Abigail Pickard Price. Also featuring is the Senior Youth Theatre with David Wood's adaptation of Michelle Magorian's affecting story Goodnight Mister Tom and the revival of two Watermill Theatre recent hits - Craig Taylor's One Million Plays About Britain and The Watermill Ensemble's A Midsummer Night's Dream following its run at Wilton's Music Hall in the new year.

The season will also include a series of one off events including The Mistakable Sound of Ed MacArthur who makes a return to the theatre following his recent performance in Murder For Two, a Sunday session with 1950's rock and roll band The Boulevards and Children's Theatre Company Really Big Pants return with Wonky.

Watermill Theatre Artistic Director Paul Hart says:

"I am thrilled to announce our plans for the first half of 2020. It feels so important to be concentrating our efforts on the development of new work and absolutely demonstrates our commitment to nurturing and staging it whilst continuing to create a broad range of work for our audiences. It's a real treat to welcome back both One Million Tiny Plays About Britain and A Midsummer Night's Dream following London transfers to Jermyn Street Theatre and Wilton's Music Hall respectively. Both shows promise to brighten up the winter nights with warmth and humour. Darren Clark and Rhys Jennings' The Wicker Husband is such an exciting prospect for us - it's the perfect show for the Watermill space. We can't wait to start working on Hamlet with The Watermill Ensemble, a play that seems to find new resonance in every era and audiences can expect a Hamlet unlike anything they've seen before. Camp Albion is a brilliant new play, which finds contemporary relevance in the events surrounding the creation of the Newbury bypass. We are also thrilled to be staging a brand-new musical adaptation of Graham Greene's thrilling spy novel Our Man in Havana in this brand-new version by the masterful Ben Morales Frost and Richard Hough. All these, along with our Senior Youth Theatre production of the enchanting Goodnight Mister Tom, add up to an ambitious season of work, which we can't wait to share with audiences. From our beautiful and unique space at The Watermill we are proud to create great theatre which is enhanced by the very special relationship between audiences and artists, and this season follows a year where eight of our productions have toured nationally or transferred to London, reaching even more audience members around the country."

PRIORITY BOOKING OPENS: FRIDAY 18 OCTOBER AT 10AM

GENERAL BOOKING OPENS: MONDAY 28 OCTOBER AT 10AM

https://www.watermill.org.uk

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