Theatre News

Birmingham Rep's 2020 spring season to include RSC Tartuffe and Asking for It UK premiere

The venue will also host a variety of touring productions across the season

Asking for It
Asking for It
© Hugh O'Conor

The Birmingham Rep has unveiled shows that will feature in its 2020 spring season, the last before new artistic director Sean Foley's autumn programme.

The award-winning stage adaptation of Louise O'Neill's novel Asking For It will have its UK premiere in Birmingham, where it runs from 31 January to 15 February. Directed by Annabelle Comyn and penned by Meadhbh McHugh, the show is set in County Cork where a woman's life is changed by an act of violence.

Iqbal Khan's production of Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto adaptation of Moliére's Tartuffe, which originally ran at the RSC, will transfer to the Birmingham Rep where it runs from 20 March to 4 April.

The REP's deputy artistic director Amit Sharma will create a new version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, featuring a community cast from across the city. It runs from 16 to 25 April.

Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, creators of The Wipers Times, will present their new play A Bunch of Amateurs, about a former Hollywood action hero who accidentally decides to appear in an amateur production of King Lear in Suffolk. The comedy runs from 26 to 30 May.

Previously announced shows include a gender-swapped Marlowe adaptation called Faustus: That Damned Woman, a Ramps on the Moon production of Oliver Twist adapted by Bryony Lavery and Temi Wilkey's The High Table, co-produced with the Bush Theatre.

Told By An Idiot will bring its The Strange Tale of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel to the studio space, while Debris Stevenson's Poet In Da Corner will visit the venue as part of a tour.