Nine-play season for Theatre by the Lake

Published: 12 December 2015
Reporter: David Upton

Ann Martin (Festival Director, Keswick Film Festival), Kay Dunbar (Director of Words by the Water Festival), Mary Papadima (Associate Director), Peter Macqueen (Writer and Actor), Ian Forrest (Artistic Director) and Patric Gilchrist (Executive Director) i

Theatre by the Lake in Keswick will follow up its 2015 summer season by staging nine plays in 2016, including the world première of a stage adaptation of The Shepherd’s Life, James Rebanks’s best-selling account of his life as a Cumbrian sheep farmer.

“This year we have as varied and exciting a mix of plays for theatregoers to Keswick as any I can remember,” said Ian Forrest, Theatre by the Lake’s Artistic Director, as he unveiled the year’s programme.

“We have two brand new plays for spring. For summer, we have in the Main House a northern comedy, a 1950s noir thriller and an 18th century classic comedy.

“Studio audiences will see an intense psychological prison drama, a Greek tragedy and a highly topical play by one of Britain’s finest living playwrights about the after-effects of the Iraq war.”

The three main house plays are:

  • Watch It, Sailor! by Philip King and Falkland Cary
  • Dial M for Murder by Frederick Knott
  • The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The three studio plays are:

  • The Vertical Hour by David Hare
  • Sophokles’ Elektra translated by Anne Carson
  • Iron by Rona Munro

The Christmas 2016 production will be The Emperor and the Nightingale by Neil Duffield, based on The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen.

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