Two world premieres in Northampton’s ‘exciting season’

Published: 13 May 2012
Reporter: Steve Orme

BacchaeBilled as “one of the most exciting seasons of work that Northampton’s Royal and Derngate has ever staged”, Festival of Chaos starts this month with two world premieres.

A new version of Euripides’ Greek tragedy, The Bacchae will be staged in a disused print works in the town centre while Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding will take to the Royal stage.

Festival of Chaos has been chosen by the Cultural Olympiad to be part of the London 2012 Festival.

The Bacchae and Blood Wedding will be performed in rotation by the same company of actors and both will be directed by Royal and Derngate’s artistic director Laurie Sansom.

The Bacchae will take audiences into the underbelly of a modern city built on money and greed, where a riotous underground world is emerging.

This surprisingly comic tale plunges audiences into an atmospheric world of dancing, drinking and laughter on the one hand and murder, violence and retribution on the other.

Poetry and music join together in a new version of Blood Wedding. In a close-knit community in rural Spain, a long-term feud between two warring households is simmering.

A desperate mother reluctantly agrees to her son’s choice of bride but on the day of the wedding her worst fears are realised when the bride disappears with a former lover.

The Bacchae runs from Friday (18 May) until Saturday, 30 June and Blood Wedding from Friday, 25 May until Saturday, 30 June.

Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler will complete Festival of Chaos in July.

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