Manchester's Royal Exchange has announced its first new season since it scrapped the role of Artistic Director last year then appointed Selina Cartmell to take the new role of Creative Director from next month.
Stef O'Driscoll will make her Royal Exchange debut directing Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, set in the Palace nightclub in the hedonistic Athens world, in a production "celebrating Manchester’s synonymous links with dance, music and rave culture".
She said, "my relationship with Manchester has always been through its beautiful rave scene, mainly drum and bass and jungle music. I’ve had some of the best nights out here in Manchester... Blending the worlds of Shakespeare and Manchester's current rave scene, I wanted to celebrate that music in this production and highlight Manchester’s many gifted artists, rappers and MCs alongside Shakespeare.”
The winner of the 2022 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Nathan Queeley-Dennis's Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, which ran at the Royal Court in London last year, finally comes to the stage where he collected his award, but only for four midweek performances as part of a national tour.
For Christmas, the musical Spend Spend Spend by Steve Brown and Justin Greene, inspired by the life of pools jackpot winner Viv Nicholson in 1961, the title of which comes from her answer to the question of what she would do with the money, is to be revived by director Josh Seymour with Rachel Leskovac as Nicholson.
Former Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom will return in the new year to direct a double bill of short plays by Caryl Churchill, Escaped Alone and What If If Only, in which, according to Frankcom, "Churchill so brilliantly explodes the domestic and the apocalyptic. It shouldn’t feel radical to put female characters over seventy years old centre stage but it still does. Churchill’s Escaped Alone celebrates the emotional and intellectual dexterity that only older actresses can bring to live performance. What If If Only is epic in its ideas and audaciously distilled in its form—a brilliant challenge for any director."
In August, the Royal Exchange’s Young Company will present Threshold, three intersecting stories from Young Company Writers Graduates Rosa Gatley, Sharvi Rana and Jake Talbot mentored by playwright Becky Prestwich and directed by Tian Glasgow.