Shakespeare North Playhouse has unveiled its opening programme with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Christmas Carol and audiences with Johnny Vegas and Jimmy McGovern among highlights.
The new £30m theatre in Prescot, Liverpool, home to the only 17th-century style timber theatre outside London and anticipated to attract 140,000 visitors a year, will open its doors to the public with a weekend of free festivities, from July 15–17.
Theatre professionals used nearby Warrington as their base to hold a workshop aimed at researching and developing ideas for the first production at the new venue.
Not Too Tame, the Warrington-based theatre collective, is co-producer on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The venue will feature a 350-seat theatre, replicating those popular during the Elizabethan era, alongside an outdoor performance garden, exhibition and visitor centre and educational facilities.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs from September 22 to October 22. It is said Shakespeare wrote the comedy to mark the wedding of Knowsley’s 6th Earl of Derby, William, to Elizabeth de Vere in the presence of Queen Elizabeth I.
The Playhouse will also host comedy and music from a variety of artists, with two local legends, Liverpool screenwriter Jimmy McGovern and St Helens comedian and actor Johnny Vegas, booked for the first ticketed events inside the Cockpit Theatre: An Evening With Jimmy McGovern July 23 and An Evening With Johnny Vegas July 29.
Headline show for the autumn and winter season will be Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, recreated with a distinctly Knowsley feel, offering "a slightly bonkers, fast and furious retelling of the original text with some familiar local references and a sprinkling of pantomime fun".