A major revival of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer prize-winning play Harvey, a new production of The King’s Speech and no fewer than six world premières are included in Birmingham REP’s spring and summer 2015 season.
Artistic director Roxana Silbert says of the 2015 programme, “I’m delighted to be able to offer our audiences a real breadth of vibrant theatrical voices from the King of England to a working-class Glaswegian boxer.
“We’re fortunate to embrace a building and an audience who will welcome plays that range from the Broadway hit Harvey to local writer Steve Camden’s debut play Back Down. He and another local writer Stephanie Ridings have their plays staged here at The REP for the first time.
“I’m particularly proud of our commitment to new regional and international work. We’ll be turning the theatre inside out with the BE Festival and Accidental Brummie, a new piece developed by our Foundry artists, and we’ll also be welcoming the acclaimed Palestinian Freedom Theatre on their first UK tour.”
James Dreyfus, probably best known for appearing in the TV series Gimme, Gimme, Gimme will play Elwood in Harvey, which opens the season. It runs from 6 until 21 February.
Roxana Silbert will direct The King’s Speech, the play by David Seidler from which the Oscar-winning movie was adapted. Ray Coulthard will be the king and Jason Donovan will play Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue. Co-produced with Chichester Festival Theatre, The King’s Speech is at The REP from 25 February until 7 March before a UK tour.
The season will also feature a new production of Jim Cartwright’s The Rise and Fall of Little Voice from 15 until 30 May. The Olivier Award-winning play about painfully shy but hugely talented Little Voice and her faultless impersonations of the greatest divas will be directed by James Brining, artistic director of West Yorkshire Playhouse, which is co-producing the play with The REP.
The first of six world premières is Stephanie Riding’s Unknown Male (28 until 31 January), a “haunting play exploring the impact of a railway suicide on a train driver and her family”. Stephanie Riding is a graduate of Roxana Silbert’s inaugural REP Foundry artist development programme.
Back Down (27 February until 7 March) is the first play by Birmingham-born Steven Camden, more commonly known as award-winning performance poet Polarbear. Directed by The REP’s associate director Tessa Walker, Back Down is “an insightful and funny coming-of-age story” which will also tour to regional school and community venues.
Feed the Beast (16 April until 2 May) looks at the rocky relationship between the press and politicians. Written by Steven Thompson, this world première is co-produced with the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich and will be directed by Peter Rowe.
Taking place in the Library of Birmingham as well as The REP’s public and backstage spaces, Accidental Brummie (5 until 9 May), created by director Cressida Brown in collaboration with the REP’s Foundry artists, will explore how many of the city’s inhabitants became a Brummie accidentally and asks what it means to be a Brummie.
The Palestinian Freedom Theatre will stage The Siege (1 until 6 June), a new play inspired by the true story of a group of fighters who took sanctuary in one of the world’s holiest sites, the Church of the Nativity.
Palestinian theatre director Nabil Al-Raee and British theatre director Zoe Lafferty traced the fighters who are now exiled across Europe and collected their untold accounts. The Siege has been created by the Freedom Theatre actors, an ensemble of performers who have lived under occupation their whole lives.
A “haunting monologue” about a Glaswegian boxer, The Pyramid Texts (26 until 30 May) by BAFTA-winning writer Geoff Thompson and performed by James Cosmo, receives its world première at The REP, as does the bittersweet story Collidescope (30 March) by REP Foundry artist Hannah Graham.
The West End comedy Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense (9 until 14 March) arrives at The REP and features Robert Webb as Bertie Wooster. He will be joined by Christopher Ryan for an evening of raucous comedy with Wodehouse’s finest characters.
The programme of visiting productions also includes Talawa Theatre’s All My Sons by Arthur Miller (24 until 28 March), Kneehigh Theatre with a new staging of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (17 until 22 April) and Joan Littlewood’s musical Oh! What a Lovely War (5 until 9 May) by Theatre Royal Stratford East.
In the lead-up to the general election, The REP’s youth theatre company, The Young REP, will present The Manifesto (17 March until 1 April), a short season of punchy, political plays from satirical comedies to gripping dramas.
Other highlights include Siân Phillips and Robert Powell in French writer Collette’s A Summer in the South (15 February), Birmingham writer and actor Tyrone Huggins’s The Honey Man (16 until 21 February), Caroline Horton’s Penelope Retold (1 and 2 April), Selina Thompson’s Chewing the Fat (14 until 16 May) and Tamasha Theatre’s 21st century love story Blood (19 until 23 May).
The season concludes with the return of BE Festival (22 until 28 June), offering a vibrant selection of theatre from across Europe.