Following his hugely successful and highly acclaimed first year as artistic director, Tom Littler is marking the start of his second year at the helm with a season of new work celebrating rebellious spirits. This includes the first UK production by award-winning British/American playwright Bathsheba Doran, the world premiere of a play about the maverick surrealist, Leonora Carrington, the revival of a modern Canadian classic and a rip-roaring, spine-chilling, body-snatching Christmas comedy.
The autumn REBELS Season comprises:
The world premiere of Alice Allemano's About Leo, directed by JMK Award-winning
Michael Oakley
5 September to 29 September - press performance 7 September.
About Leo tells the true story of surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. When a young journalist turns up unexpectedly in Mexico City, the elderly Leo must confront her past, including her legendary love affair with the artist Max Ernst. Inspired by real events, About Leo is a gripping drama, which skilfully unpicks ideas about art and inspiration. This is Allemano's first play.
The European premiere of Parents' Evening, by Bathsheba Doran.
3 October to 27 October - press performance 5 October
Parents' Evening is a contemporary marital drama set at a parent-teacher evening that goes disastrously wrong.
Bathsheba Doran is a Londoner who moved to the US after studying at Cambridge University, and became one of the most highly regarded playwrights in American theatre: a
Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and Writers Guild Award nominee, and Berwin Lee Award winner, her most recent play debuted at
Lincoln Center Theater, and her extensive screenwriting includes Boardwalk Empire and Masters of Sex. For the first time, Doran's plays return to the UK. Directed by
Stella Powell-Jones, Jermyn Street Theatre's Deputy Director.
A mini-season commemorating the centenary of the end of the First World War.
Billy Bishop Goes to War, by
John Gray with
Eric Peterson, directed by
Jimmy Walters in a co-production with Proud Haddock.
31 October - 24 November - press performance 2 November
Billy Bishop Goes To War is a two-man play with songs that chronicles the true story of the audacious First World War flying ace, Billy Bishop. First produced in Vancouver in 1978, it has taken its place as the most performed play in Canadian theatre history. The run is accompanied by one-night performances of This Evil Thing, a drama about conscientious objectors written and performed by
Michael Mears, and Never Such Innocence, an evening of wartime music and poetry.
A co-production with the Watermill Theatre of Tom Wentworth's black comedy Burke and Hare, directed by Abigail Pickard Price.
28 November - 21 December - Press performance 30 November
In 19th century Edinburgh,
William Burke and
William Hare spotted a gap in the market: a huge demand from the medical profession for human corpses. They created a dastardly plan to meet the demand with a steady supply.
During the theatre's first year as a producing venue, it has staged world premieres of five full-length plays (including
Howard Brenton's The Blinding Light) and five one-act plays, two European premieres, and several revivals including the complete cycle of
Noel Coward's Tonight at 8.30. Jermyn Street Theatre, a signatory to the Equity Fringe Agreement, has also reported that its weekly sales are up by over 50%, and it has employed 28 female and 26 male actors.
Tickets priced £10 to £30, including 100 tickets at £10 for under-30s for each production, and £15 preview tickets. For full details please see the website.
Booking: jermynstreettheatre.co.uk / 020 7287 2875
Jermyn Street Theatre is an arthouse theatre in the heart of London's West End. The 70-seat studio opened in 1994, and has since won numerous awards and transferred many productions to the West End and Broadway. In summer 2017
Tom Littler became Artistic Director. Littler relaunched the venue as a producing house with The ESCAPE Season. Jermyn Street Theatre is a signatory to the Equity Fringe Agreement.
The ESCAPE Season opened with the world premiere of
Howard Brenton's The Blinding Light, directed by Littler, nominated for four OffWestEnd Awards. This was followed by the world premiere of Judith Burnley's Anything That Flies directed by
Alice Hamilton, and
Howard Brenton's new version of Miss Julie, in a critically-acclaimed production by Littler, co-produced with Theatre by the Lake, also nominated for four OffWestEnd Awards and named one of the best 20 plays of 2017 in the Evening Standard. The Hound of the Baskervilles, directed by
Lotte Wakeham and co-produced with English Theatre Frankfurt, ran an extended run in December.
The SCANDAL Season featured the European premiere of Woman Before a Glass by
Lanie Robertson, directed by Tony Award-winning
Austin Pendleton; the world premieres of Mad as Hell and Maureen Duffy's Hilda and Virginia, and a rare revival of The Dog Beneath the Skin by
W.H. Auden and
Christopher Isherwood.
The REACTION Season saw the first complete London revival since 1936 of
Noel Coward's nine-play cycle Tonight at 8.30, nominated for four OffWestEnd Awards. Playing alongside were three reaction pieces by contemporary female playwrights called Tomorrow at Noon. Currently running is Esther Freud's first play, Stitchers, starring Sinead Cusack. Following Stitchers the season continues with The Play About My Dad from acclaimed US playwright
Boo Killebrew, and ends with Hymn to Love, starring Olivier Award nominee Elizabeth Mansfield as
Edith Piaf - a co-production with Theatre by the Lake and York Theatre Royal.
