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OperaUpClose Dons Soho Again, More Spaces

Soho Theatre’s artistic director Steve Marmion, who has been in post since July 2010, has unveiled his first season for the venue with Whatsonstage.com and Olivier Award-winners OperaUpClose returning with a new English adaptation of Don Giovanni.

The Soho will also stage the English premiere of Anthony Neilson's Realism which was presented at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival and is his follow up to The Wonderful World Of Dissocia. Marmion will direct the production, which pulls back the curtain in front of the imagination and fantasies of a normal man. Realism opens on 15 June (previews from 9 June) and will run until 9 July.

Up and coming writer Ed Harris debuts his Soho Theatre commission, Mongrel Island from 21 July (previews from 14 July) to 6 August 2011. The show, which will be staged with the same cast as Realism takes a bittersweet, touching and darkly comic look at how the world and workplace invade and manipulate our humanity. 


OperaUpClose return to the Soho with Don Giovanni following the award-winning production of La Boheme which transferred from the Cock Tavern in July 2010 - the Soho's first ever opera. The production, now the longest continually-running opera in London, continues in rep at London's Little Opera House, the King's Head Theatre. Don Giovanni mixes "sex, drugs and Mozart" and is set in the excess of the 1990s. Don is played as a city trader who - with his hapless intern Leporello - are working hard and playing harder, leaving a trail of broken hearts, junked-up prostitutes and banker’s blood in their wake.

The new production, which will be sung in English, will run from 11 August to 17 August 2011. OperaUpClose's previous production, La Boheme won the Whatsonstage.com Award for Best Off-West End production and the Olivier for Best New Opera Production.

The Soho have also announced the creation of a dedicated comedy and cabaret space, the Soho Theatre Downstairs which is described as "20s Berlin meets 50s new York meets 21st century Soho".

The space opens on 13 June and has an initial line-up including post-punk pioneers Tiger Lillies; comics Stewart Lee, Justin Bond, Janey Godley and Omid Djalili; queer cabaret from Justin Bond; comedy and music from The Horne Section; anti-drag queen David Hoyle; a UK premiere from the Pajama Men; subversive and reckless comedy from Neil Hamburger; and a Sunday performance of Jonny Woo’s anarchic Gay Bingo.


A second space, the Soho Theatre Upstairs, has also been created, dedicated to emerging companies, new talent, young people and the most experimental new writing. Highlights of the work announced for that space include TriForce presenting THE Play by Noel Clarke; Synergy Theatre Project's Convictions; Epic by David Luff; spoken word from Apples & Snakes; After The Accident by Julian Armitstead presented by REM Projects; and Hundreds and Thousands by Lou Ramsden.

Full listing information for the Soho's upcoming season can be found on the theatre's website at sohotheatre.com

- by Andrew Girvan

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