New productions and initiatives in Ipswich
December 16, 2008
The New Wolsey Theatre is keeping up its reputation for exciting new work as the recently-announced spring season suggests. There are in-house productions, productions shared with other theatres, a series of adventurous short runs from visiting companies and an Arts Council project to supplement existing signed and audio-described performances with captioned ones.
These latter are already familiar to opera-goers in London and those who attend the large-scale venues in regional centres which habitually receive major touring productions. See a Voice, as the ACE scheme is called, also applies to the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds and the Mercury Theatre, Colchester. It will be interesting to see how it works out in practice; I remember feeling that the captions for a Russian-language production of The Three Sisters in Cambridge two years ago distracted from rather than enhanced the action.
Aids for theatre-goers are not the only things which the Wolsey and the Mercury have in common. New Wolsey artistic director Peter Rowe is to stage a production of Alan Ayckbourn’s A Chorus of Disapproval which runs from 12 to 28 February in Ipswich before transferring to Colchester between 5 and 21 March. There will be captioned as well as signed and audio-described performances in both theatres.
That will also be the case for Chimps, which was a success for writer Simon Block when first staged at the Hampstead Theatre in 1997. It’s a dark comedy about a young couple, designers by profession and new home-owners, who are expecting their first child – then what happens to their apparently secure and pleasant lives when a persistent salesman shows up on their doorstep. You can find out more from 30 April to 16 May.
Eclipse Theatre have a well-established partnership with the New Wolsey, Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Kester Aspden’s award-winning book The Hounding of Daniel Oluwale has been adapted for the stage by Oladipo Agboluaje and is directed by Dawn Walton. It’s the often-gruesome, at times even savage but true story of a man who died after police interrogation, and the ensuing search for justice. It runs from 11 to 14 March.
Birmingham Repertory Theatre are also involved in Whiter than Snow by Mike Kerry, a presentation by the Graeae Theatre Company on 5, 6 and 7 March. Graeae is the well-established disabled-led ensemble which produces original work with an integrated cast. This play is about a family staging the story of Snow White in chaotic circumstances. Another classic with a twist is the Pilot Theatre and York Theatre Royal production of Nigel Williams’s stage adaptation of William Golding’s novel The Lord of the Flies (17 to 21 March).
Middle Ground Theatre Company are currently touring The Holly and the Ivy. Between 14 and 18 April they bring they open their new production by Michael Lunney of the 1960 hit Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall with original cast member Helen Fraser (then playing Barbara) now as Billy’s mother.
The early 20th century Co-operative Correspondence Club was the subject of Jenna Bailey’s book Can Any Mother Help Me?; Foursight Theatre’s dramatisation is staged in connexion with the Women’s Arts International Festival on 25 and 26 March. By way of complete contrast, Peepolykus offer a comical spy story which somehow is entangled in shambolic rehearsals for The Importance of Being Earnest between 31 March and 4 April. This comes east from the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in association with the West Yorkshire Playhouse and the Warwick Arts Centre.
On 7 April you can see the latest Tilted Productions movement theatre piece. It’s called Anomalous Creatures and is also supported by Colchester’s Mercury Theatre. As part of this year’s rural tour, Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal new adaptation of Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat rows in between 26 and 28 May. This is directed by Abigail Anderson who, with Daniel O’Brien, has dramatised the story.
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