The Lyric Hammersmith have announced their Spring 2017 season, a diverse and eclectic programme of major new works featuring national and international collaborations.
Following the Lyric Hammersmith’s much-loved annual pantomime, Aladdin, which closes the winter season, Fantastic Mr Fox, a co-production with Nuffield and Curve, will launch itself on to the Lyric stage early in the new year. This fresh musical adaption of the classic story, full of family fun, coincides with the 100th anniversary of Roald Dahl’s birth.
In March the Lyric will create a new UK production of Matthew Whittet’s acclaimed play, Seventeen, directed by Anne-Louise Sarks. A funny, wise, immature and bittersweet celebration of teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, played by a cast of septuagenarians.
After Easter, the Lyric co-produces the dazzlingly original stage version of Paul Auster’s City of Glass, adapted by Tony Award-winning 59 Productions and Olivier Award-nominated playwright Duncan Macmillan. This production is the first-ever stage adaptation of one of Auster’s novels in the UK, which will embark on an international tour after its run at the Lyric.
Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox
Wednesday 25 January – Sunday 19 February 2017
Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox is family fun at its finest. A tale of greed, pride and the power of friendship, this flagship production for the Roald Dahl 100 celebrations promises a huge theatrical feast with live music and songs, ideal for the whole family.
Boggis, Bunce and Bean, three greedy, smelly, horrid farmers hate the cunning MrFox.
Mr Fox is smart, clever and rather fantastic, but he doesn’t realise how determined the farmers are to get revenge. Can he hatch a plan to save his family and friends? Can they outrun the diggers and outsmart the farmers? And can Rabbit shut up long enough not to give the game away?
Fantastic Mr Fox has a stellar creative team: Director Maria Aberg (The White Devil, As You Like It, King John, all RSC; Hotel, National Theatre), playwright Sam Holcroft (Rules for Living, National Theatre, The Wardrobe, National Theatre Connections) and designer Nuffield Associate Tom Scutt (King Charles III Almeida/West End/Broadway), Wozzeck (English National Opera), Constellations (Royal Court/West End/Broadway).
The music is composed by Arthur Darvill, whose acting credits include ‘Rory’ in BBC TV’s Doctor Who and ‘Rev. Paul Coates’ in Broadchurch. His music credits include (Been So Long, Young Vic and The Frontline, The Globe).
Seventeen
Saturday 04 March – Saturday 08 April 2017
This spring the Lyric Hammersmith will create a new UK production, which will also be the European premiere, of Seventeen, a play by Matthew Whittet, directed by Anne-Louise Sarks, who directed the first production in Sydney.
Seventeen is set in that time after the end of the last day of school, but just before everyone moves on. It’s about the cusp of adulthood, the cusp of complete change.
Sue is Mike’s girlfriend. Tom is Mike’s best friend, but he’s secretly in love with Sue. Edwina is Sue’s goody- two-shoes best friend and she’s about to get drunk for the first time. Lizzy is Mike’s annoying younger sister. And Ronny, well no-one invited Ronny and no one’s quite sure why he’s there. As dawn approaches, through a fog of cheap beer, dreams are shared, insecurities aired and secrets spilled.
Funny, immature, wise and a little bit sad, Seventeen, performed by a cast of septuagenarians, will turn our notions of adulthood and adolescence on their head.
Paul Auster’s City of Glass
Thursday 20 April – Saturday 13 May 2017
City of Glass, the first part of Paul Auster’s landmark three part novel, brought vividly to life on the Lyric stage in a dazzlingly original stage adaptation by Tony Award- winning 59 Productions (An American in Paris, War Horse, David Bowie Is) and Olivier Award-nominated The New York Trilogy, will be playwright Duncan Macmillan (People, Places and Things, 1984).
In 2017, Auster turns 70 and The New York Trilogy, his first-ever work of prose fiction marks three decades in publication. The first part of this celebrated trilogy, which has captivated the imaginations of readers across the world, will be staged in Manchester and London ahead of its international tour.
“It was a wrong number that started it.” When reclusive crime writer Daniel Quinn receives a mysterious phone call from a man seeking a private detective in the middle of the night, he quickly and unwittingly becomes the protagonist in a real-life thriller of his own. He falls under the spell of a strange and seductive woman, who engages him to protect her young husband from his sociopathic father. As the familiar territory of the noir detective genre gives way to something altogether more disturbing and unpredictable, Quinn becomes consumed by his mission, and begins to lose his grip on reality. Will he be drawn deeper into the abyss, or might unmasking this dark story of familial abuse and religious conspiracy provide the purpose and meaning he needs to rebuild his shattered life?
59 Productions is adapting this extraordinary and hallucinatory literary thriller for the stage in collaboration with writer Duncan Macmillan (Lungs, People, Places and Things, 1984), renowned Danish choreographer and movement director Kim Brandstrup (London Royal Ballet, Danish Royal Ballet, Rambert) and a Tony and Olivier award-winning creative team including sound designer Gareth Fry (The Encounter, Let the Right One In, Harry Potter) and composer Nick Powell (Wolf Hall, The Nether, The Wonderful World of Dissocia).
Featuring design inspired by the acclaimed graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, this brand new production will feature many of the ground-breaking techniques that have made 59 Productions “the leading purveyors of video for theatre in the world” (The Guardian). Cutting-edge projection-mapping, combined with stagecraft, magic and illusion will immerse audiences into Quinn’s increasingly dystopic and fragmented world.
Also booking at the Lyric Hammersmith
Things I Know to be True
Frantic Assembly return to the Lyric with their new play by leading Australian writer Andrew Bovell featuring their celebrated physicality.
Saturday 10 September – Saturday 01 October 2016
Shopping and Fucking
Twentieth Anniversary production of Mark Ravenhill’s provocative, landmark ’90s play. Friday 07 October 2016 – Saturday 05 November 2016
Aladdin
The Lyric’s traditional panto returns in 2016 when Aladdin flies in to Hammersmith on his magic carpet for more festive fun Lyric style.
Saturday 19 November 2016 – Saturday 07 January 2017
