Suranne Jones returns to Manchester Royal Exchange’s main stage to star in an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s gender-swapping novel Orlando—the opening production of the Spring 2014 season at the venue.
She takes the title role in Sarah Ruhl’s stage version and is best known for ITV police drama Scott And Bailey and her long-running role as Karen McDonald in Coronation Street. She was last seen at the Royal Exchange in Blithe Spirit in 2009.
Described as the longest love letter in literary history, Woolf’s novel about sex, love, and history was a tribute to her lover, writer Vita Sackville-West.
To mark next year’s First World War centenary, the season also includes a reworking of literature’s oldest war poem alongside a Bruntwood Prize-winning piece of new writing about the experience of armed conflict today.
The Last Days Of Troy is poet Simon Armitage’s new version of Homer’s The Iliad and will run in rep with Gareth Farr’s Britannia Waves The Rules.
Other performances include a new production of Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing directed by rising director Maria Aberg, a stage version of iconic 1950s novel Billy Liar directed by Sam Yates and Jules Verne’s Around The World In Eighty Days in a co-production with the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Full details of the new season in The Studio at the Exchange are still to be announced.