Chichester Festival Theatre announces first shows in 60th anniversary season
© Seamus Ryan
Chichester Festival Theatre has unveiled fresh productions that will open its 60th anniversary season.
The season will open with a new play by best-selling writer Kate Mosse, based on her hit novel The Taxidermist's Daughter. Directed by Róisín McBrinn, the piece is a gothic mystery thriller with a story set in and around Chichester. It plays from 8 to 30 April, with design by Paul Wills, with casting by Charlotte Sutton.
As covered here, the National and Chichester Festival Theatre will co-produce Alecky Blythe's new verbatim play Our Generation (22 to 14 May), while the venue will also work with the Bridge Theatre to stage Stephen Beresford's The Southbury Child starring Alex Jennings (13 to 25 June).
As already revealed, the venue's hit production of South Pacific will tour the nation and run in London next summer.
The remainder of the season will be confirmed in February 2022.
Artistic director Daniel Evans and executive director Kathy Bourne said: "The prospect of Chichester Festival Theatre's 60th anniversary season is a truly joyous one. This Theatre, built by the community, for the community, has been at the heart of West Sussex cultural life since its inception. It was here, in 1962, that Laurence Olivier established the nucleus of the National Theatre company that opened at the Old Vic the following year; so it's especially appropriate that, 60 years on, we begin our Minerva season with a co-production
with the National. We are thrilled to be introducing Alecky Blythe's engrossing verbatim work to Chichester audiences with her new play, Our Generation."
"And what could be more appropriate for our 60th anniversary curtain raiser in the Festival Theatre than a new play by an internationally best-selling writer with Chichester in her very bones? Not only has Kate Mosse been intimately connected with CFT since childhood, her thrilling and timely play The Taxidermist's Daughter is set in historic Chichester itself. We are equally delighted that Róisín McBrinn makes her directorial debut here."
