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Bond & Kelly Plays Premiere at Birmingham Rep

The Birmingham Rep has announced its Autumn/Winter 2009-10 season, with highlights including the premieres of new plays by Dennis Kelly and Edward Bond, the latter's seventh play for theatre in education company Big Brum, of which he is an associate artist.

Also included in the new season is Jonathan Church's production of Frank Galati's Tony Award-winning adaptation of Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath (20-31 October), the return of Rufus Norris’ touring Cabaret (4-19 September), Iqbal Khan’s revival of Ayub Khan-Din's East is East (25 September-17 October) and Bryony Lavery’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol (25 November-9 January).

Orphans, which runs in the Rep's studio space The Door from 10 to 26 September 2009, is a new play by Dennis Kelly, who won the 2006 Meyer Whitworth Award for his play Osama the Hero at the Hampstead Theatre. Co-produced with Traverse Theatre Company in association with Paines Plough, it's directed by Paines Plough artistic director Roxana Silbert.

It's followed in The Door by Edward Bond's as yet untitled new play for young people, which runs from 21 to 24 October. Bond, one of the most influential post-war British playwrights whose 1965 play Saved was a cause célèbre for the ending of censorship, now mostly presents his work in Europe, although he did receive his West End premiere last year with Jonathan Kent's revival of The Sea at the Theatre Royal Haymarket (See News, 9 Jul 2007).

Samantha Ellis’ Cling To Me Like Ivy, which is “inspired by a chance remark by Victoria Beckham in 2004 which sparked a crisis within the Orthodox Jewish community about the wigs worn by married Orthodox Jewish women” - rounds off the season in The Door from 11 to 27 February 2010.

- by Theo Bosanquet

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