On Golden Pond, Miller & Friel feature in new Salisbury season

Salisbury Playhouse has announced its autumn/winter 2013 season, which includes new productions of On Golden Pond and The Recruiting Officer, an Arthur Miller/Brian Friel double bill and visits from Headlong and English Touring Theatre.

The season opens with a revival of On Golden Pond, directed by Ria Parry.

Ernest Thompson’s “witty and warm look at family and living life to the full” was famously adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn. It runs in the Main House from 12 September to 5 October 2013.

Artistic director Gareth Machin will then direct a production of George Farquhar’s “raucous and wonderfully English comedy” The Recruiting Officer, running in the Main House from 31 October to 23 November. Original music will be provided by Kate Edgar, who was most recently at Salisbury Playhouse as musical supervisor on A Man of No Importance.

Meanwhile, The Salberg studio will be specially re-configured for a double bill of plays about the “shocks and surprises of adulterous love”; Arthur Miller’s Elegy for a Lady and Brian Friel’s The Yalta Game. Directed by Emily Watson Howes, they run from 2 to 19 October.

Christmas will include the traditional pantomime Dick Whittington and His Cat, directed by Joyce Branagh (4 December-11 January) and The Salberg will see a new show, London Calling (18 December-18 January), a celebration in words and music of our capital city.

The Playhouse will also host a range of touring productions including English Touring Theatre with Ibsen’s Ghosts, Headlong with George Orwell’s 1984 and the 60th anniversary production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.