The Theatre Royal has announced a host of new shows which are set to tour to Bath this year. Tickets for the new productions are on sale now to members for priority booking, with general booking opening on 1 February.
Geraldine Somerville (Gosford Park, Harry Potter films, Cracker) will star in Tennessee Williams’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie, from Monday 13 to Saturday 18 May. First seen at the Royal Exchange Theatre, this acclaimed production is directed by Atri Banerjee.
Tom escapes a suffocating home life through cigarettes and long visits to the movies while his sister, Laura, withdraws into her records and collection of glass animals. But their mother, Amanda, harbours dreams for them far beyond their shabby apartment. When Tom brings home a potential suitor for Laura, Amanda seizes the opportunity to try and change their fortunes forever. A poetic portrayal of a family on the brink of change, this intimate and intense memory play explores the complex web of love and loyalty that binds families together.
Direct from the West End, Life of Pi visits the Theatre Royal from Wednesday 22 to Saturday 25 May as part of its first ever UK tour. Lolita Chakrabarti’s dazzling five-time Olivier Award-winning stage adaptation, starring an extraordinary life-size puppeteered Bengal Tiger, also received three Tony Awards following its Broadway premiere.
Based on Yann Martel’s best-loved work of fiction – winner of the Man Booker Prize – Life of Pi is a new theatrical adaptation of an epic journey of endurance and hope. After a cargo ship sinks in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, there are five survivors stranded on a single lifeboat – a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, a sixteen-year-old boy and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. Time is against them, nature is harsh, who will survive?
After conquering the West End and Broadway, the five-star “theatrical phenomenon” (Telegraph) brings jaw-dropping visuals and world-class puppetry to Bath in a “breath-taking” (The Times) theatrical event that is “a wonder to behold” (Daily Mail).
English Touring Opera make a welcome return to Bath in the spring to perform Manon Lescaut on Monday 27 May and The Rake's Progress on Tuesday 28 May.
Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut is a devastating depiction of a woman wrestling with her desire for love on her own terms, and the rigid double standards imposed on her by society. A breakthrough hit for its composer, the opera is packed with memorable music and heart-breaking drama. Jude Christian, fresh from a critically acclaimed Titus Andronicus at London’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, brings incisive direction and a sharp, poetic new translation to her radical new production, while ETO Music Director Gerry Cornelius conducts.
Igor Stravinsky’s brilliantly inventive The Rake’s Progress charts young Tom Rakewell’s journey from unexpected riches to ruin at the hands of his own naivety and a devilish new friend. One of Stravinsky’s crowning achievements in his pioneering career, the opera is a cynical but
humanistic depiction of loss, love and how the devil finds work for idle hands. The production is directed by Polly Graham, Artistic Director of Longborough Festival Opera, and conducted by the up-and-coming conductor and composer Jack Sheen.
On Wednesday 29 and Thursday 30 May, London Classic Theatre make a welcome return to the Theatre Royal to perform Joe Orton’s What The Butler Saw, directed by Michael Cabot.
Doctor Prentice is interviewing a new secretary at his private psychiatric clinic, but Geraldine seems underqualified and uncertain about her parentage. Mrs Prentice is in urgent need of a drink, following an illicit encounter at the Station Hotel. In the meantime, Doctor Rance, a Government Inspector, and Sergeant Match arrive amidst increasing chaos with searching questions of their own.
What The Butler Saw is Joe Orton’s final, most ambitious play. A masterclass in fearless comic writing, no institution, political view or tradition is safe as he focuses his wicked sense of humour on a range of targets, including the establishment, an ex-Prime Minister, cross-dressing, misogyny and the medical profession.
Olivier Award-winner Guy Masterson brings another mind-boggling solo performance to Bath when he presents George Orwell’s Animal Farm on Friday 31 May and Saturday 1 June.
The director of the Olivier-nominated West End and Broadway hit The Shark Is Broken returns with “One of the greatest solo shows of all time” (The Times) having delighted Bath audiences with his globally acclaimed sell-out A Christmas Carol in December 2023. Faithfully adapted and astonishingly performed, Orwell's barnyard classic is brought to vivid life with only a bale of hay, a bowler hat, a horsewhip and some amazing homemade animal sound effects in an extraordinarily bravura physical performance.
Double Olivier Award-winner and Bath favourite Janie Dee stars in Laughing Boy, a brand-new play written and directed by Stephen Unwin, which tours to the Theatre Royal from Tuesday 4 to Saturday 8 June.
Connor is, well, Connor. He loves buses, Eddie Stobart and Lego. He also has learning disabilities. When he dies an entirely preventable death in NHS care, his mum Sara can’t get a straight answer as to how it happened. But Sara and her family won’t stop asking questions and soon an extraordinary campaign emerges. Both personal and political, Sara Ryan’s impassioned, frank and surprisingly funny story bursts onto the stage, as writer and director Stephen Unwin returns following his sold-out production of Katherine Moar’s Farm Hall.
Direct from the West End, Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer, creators of the global smash hit The Play That Goes Wrong and BBC series The Goes Wrong Show, bring Mischief’s riotous new comedy Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle to Bath from Tuesday 11 to Sunday 16 June.
Audiences are invited to join the Mind Mangler as he attempts a spectacular return, this time with his debut solo show. Prepare to witness hilarious feats of mentalism spiral into chaos as he attempts to read your mind, mind, mind…
In the year of the General Election, Party Games!, an acerbic new comedy by author, journalist and former political adviser Michael McManus (Maggie & Ted), visits the Theatre Royal from Tuesday 18 to Saturday 22 June. Directed by Joanna Read and starring Matthew Cottle (of BAFTA nominated BBC sitcom Game On and Channel 4’s hit comedy The Windsors), Party Games! delves inside the chaos of government to see whether advisers do advise and if ministers can decide.
Set in the UK in 2026, John Waggner newly elected leader of the hastily formed centrist One Nation Party presides over a hung parliament with a discontented electorate and striking cheese makers. He and his power-hungry MPs must cling onto authority through whatever shaky means possible. Can one man, a Svengali spin doctor and some dodgy data unite the country? And what role can his wife, the King and a large spider play in keeping the lights on, not to mention his trusty AI?
Related
Comments
Comments are disabled for this post.
