Spring/summer 2017 marks the second half of Manchester Royal Exchange's 40th anniversary year in which the venue takes inspiration from its own beginnings.
In 1976, theatre makers reclaimed Manchester’s vast, empty cotton trading hall and built a theatre like no other inspired by the origins of Greek theatre.
So next year, the Exchange teams up with Actors Touring Company and Royal Lyceum Edinburgh to remake David Greig and Ramin Gray’s five-star production of Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women. It runs from March 10 to April 1.
Director Jo Davies, whose credits include Carousel and Kiss Me Kate for Opera North, makes her Royal Exchange debut with Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night from April 13 to May 20.
Award-winning director Liz Stevenson returns to the Exchange to direct Alan Harris’s How My Light Is Spent, winner of the Judges Award in the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2015. A play about loneliness and hope, the show is a co-production with Sherman Theatre and Theatre by the Lake and runs in the Studio from April 24 to May 13.
Jeff James adapts and directs the world première of Persuasion, a retelling of Jane Austen’s masterpiece from May 25 to June 24—without a bonnet in sight.
Fatherland is a portrait of 21st-century England. A Royal Exchange co-commission with Manchester International Festival, Frantic Assembly, Lyric Hammersmith and LIFT, it runs from July 1-15.