Theatre News

LoveYourTheatre ticket packages for 2014 in Ipswich

The New Wolsey Theatre is offering theatregoers the chance to save money with ticket packages for its spring 2014 season

promotional image for "The Threepenny Opera"
promotional image for "The Threepenny Opera"

For spring 2014, the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich offers its regular patrons two separate money-saving ticket packages, one for musicals and the other for drama. Each LoveYourTheatre package includes four major productions.

The centre show of the musical one is a new production of the Brecht-Weill Threepenny Opera, to be staged by the New Wolsey's artistic director Peter Rowe and Jenny Sealey of the associate company Graeae. It runs from 12 to 22 March and is a co-production with Birmingham Rep, the Nottingham Playhouse and the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Matthew Bugg's Miss Nightingale returns to its home theatre between 27 March and 5 April. It's set in wartime London and tells how the professional and private lives of a singer and her songwriter are changed when a wealthy man takes control. Rowe directed both the original production and this revival.

Betty Blue Eyes, in the new touring production from Colchester's Mercury Theatre, has a week's run from 15 to 19 April. The fourth show in the musicals package is Tom (23 April to 3 May), which celebrates the early life and music of Welsh singer Tom Jones. It's written by Mike James, directed by Gaynor Stiles and has musical direction by Ben Goddard. Appropriately enough, it comes from Theatr na nÓg in association with RCT Theatres and NPT Theatres.

The drama package has a new tour of Talawa Theatre's Moon on a Rainbow Shawl by Errol John directed by Michael Boffong. It had a critically-acclaimed London season in 2012 in association with the National Theatre and runs from 5 to 8 February. While Trinidad celebrates the home-coming of war veterans with calypso and rum, young Ephraim dreams of a new life in the mother-country.

Jack Shepherd stars in Middle Ground Theatre Company's double-bill of classic ghost stories, which is, with perfect logic, called Classic Ghosts. The first tale is by Dickens, The Signalman. The second is by master chiller-writer M R James and is usually considered one of his best stories – Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad.

The plays are directed and designed by Michael Lunney. Terrence Hardiman and Dicken Ashworth are also in the cast to curdle your blood between 24 February and 1 March. Refugee Boy is a stage adaptation by Lemn Sissay from Benjamin Zephaniah. It's a West Yorkshire Playhouse production directed by Gail McIntyre and designed by Emma Williams.

Translations by Brian Friel is another co-production, this time between the English Touring Theatre, the Rose Theatre in Kingston and Sheffield Theatres. James Grieve directs this story of love and language set in rural Ireland in the 1830s. You can see it from 8 to 12 April as part of its national tour.

Other visiting productions include the Reduced Shakespeare Company with The Bible: Abridged on 10 and 11 February, The Insect Circus (the return of a popular family show from 19 to 21 February), Swansea City Opera with The Marriage of Figaro on 6 April and Opera della Luna's new production of The Gondoliers (9 to 11 April).

Highlights at the Studio Theatre include the Romany Theatre Company's co-production of Our Big Land by Ben Allum directed by Amy Hodge (13 to 15 February), Bryony Lavery's heartbreaking Frozen (27 February to 1 March), and a brace of 2013 Pulse successes – Ten Out of Ten on 27 March and JSA: Job Seekers Anonymous – on 3 April.