Hall announces Spring 2012 programme at Hampstead

Published: 30 January 2012
Reporter: David Chadderton

Hampstead Theatre artistic director Edward Hall has announced the theatre's spring season, which includes a world première from Mike Bartlett, a trilogy of Tom Murphy plays from Druid, a Shakespeare season from Hall's all-male Propeller and a co-production with English National Opera.

The Bartlett play is an adaptation of Colin Welland's screenplay for the hit 1981 British film Chariots of Fire about two of the athletes competing in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Directed by Hall, the play will run from 9 May to 16 June.

Dublin-based Druid Theatre Company will bring three plays by Tom Murphy: Conversations on a Homecoming, A Whistle in the Dark and Famine. Directed by Garry Hynes, they will run from 20 to 30 June.

Hall's all-male Shakespeare company Propeller will perform Henry V and The Winter's Tale from 3 to 21 July, directed by Hall.

Celebrating the 60th birthday of German composer Wolfgang Ruhm, Hampstead Theatre will collaborate with ENO on the first English language adaptation of his most-performerd opera Jakob Lenz, translated by Richard Stokes, directed by Sam Brown and conducted by Alexander Ingram, from 17 to 27 April.

Hampstead Downstairs will feature two new plays. Blue Heart Afternon by Nigel Gearing directed by Tamara Harvey is set in Hollywood in 1951 when the House Un-American Activities Committee was breathing down the studios' necks and and runs from 5 April to 12 May. The Complaint by Nick Whitby directed by Simon Usher is about a woman who makes a complaint and then "enters a Kafkaesque world of surveys, meetings and consultations that leads to torture, interrogation and attempted murder". It runs from 17 May to 16 June.

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