Theatre News

Theatre Royal Bath announces new season

Stars including Tanya Moodie, Felicity Kendal and Robert Powell all feature in the season

Robert Powell, Tanya Moodie and Felicity Kendal will feature in Theatre Royal Bath's new season
Robert Powell, Tanya Moodie and Felicity Kendal will feature in Theatre Royal Bath's new season
© Dan Wooller

Theatre Royal Bath have announced their new season with highlights including A Season of Plays from North America running in the Ustinov Studio and a number of touring productions prior to West End runs.

As part of Shakespeare 400 celebrations, The Shakespeare Revue will open the season. Originally produced by the RSC, the show will be a compilation of music and skits and feature songs and sketches by Victoria Wood, Alan Bennett, Maureen Lipman, Noël Coward and more.

Griff Rhys Jones will return to the stage to play Harpagon, the title character in Moliere's 1668 comedy, The Miser. The new adaptation is written by Sean Foley and Phil Porter and also directed by Foley. Further casting is yet to be announced.

Relatively Speaking will then run on the main stage starring Robert Powell and Liza Goddard. Alan Ayckbourn's spoof will be presented by Theatre Royal Bath Productions and Kenny Wax and returns to Bath after a West End run and prior to opening on Broadway.

Touring productions to the theatre include the previously announced Stepping Out starring Amanda Holden, a new adaptation of A Room With a View starring Felicity Kendal and directed by Adrian Noble, Simon Reade's adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice starring Felicity Montagu and the National's production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night-time.

The Rocky Horror Show, The Woman in Black and Horrible Histories will all visit the theatre as part of its autumn/winter season too.

In the Ustinov Studio, A Season of Plays from North America will run throughout the autumn. Nancy Meckler will direct Half Life, a drama about an octogenarian love affair by Canadian writer and mathematician John Mighton.

Ustinov artistic director Laurence Boswell will then direct Trouble in Mind, a play about life backstage in the white-dominated theatre world of the 1950s. Written by African American playwright Alice Childress, the production will star Tanya Moodie (Hamlet) and Joseph Marcell (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air).

Elsewhere in the season, the English Touring Opera brings a season of Baroque Opera to Bath, dance company Rambert celebrates its 90th anniversary with a programme of new works by three female choreographers and Aladdin will run over the festive period.

In the egg, the venue's children's theatre, highlights include a new adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles, written by 16 year-old Milo Morris with mentoring from Bristol-based playwright Tom Wainwright, as well as an introduction to Macbeth, Little Angel Theatre's We're Going on a Bear Hunt and a ballet version of Edward Lear's poem The Owl and the Pussycat.