Headlong season includes new Jack Thorne musical
© Dan Wooller for WhatsOnStage
Headlong’s artistic director Jeremy Herrin, has announced the company's next season, with highlights including a new musical by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child writer Jack Thorne and a new staging of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.
Junkyard, which has a book and lyrics by Thorne and music by Academy Award-winning composer Stephen Warbeck (Shakespeare in Love), is a comedy musical set in 1970s Bristol, about a miscreant group of teenagers who come together to build an adventure playground.
Directed by Herrin with designs by Chiara Stephenson, the musical will run at Bristol Old Vic from 24 February to 18 March, Theatr Clwyd from 29 March to 15 April and Rose Theatre Kingston from 19 to 30 April. Casting to be announced.
Elsewhere in the season, Headlong’s emerging director’s scheme continues with Sam Pritchard helming a new staging of Bernard Shaw's comedy, Pygmalion, in a co-production with Headlong, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Nuffield.
Pritchard's version will use sound and video technology to examine class identity and question how far accents and speech can define us in Britain today.
The production, which will have designs by Alex Lowde and sound design by Ben and Max Ringham, will run in Leeds from 8 to 25 February, before touring to Warwick, Leicester, Cheltenham, Bath, Keswick, Oxford, finishing at the Nuffield, Southampton. More dates and casting to be announced.
On the season, Herrin said: "I'm delighted that Headlong can foster so many national conversations. Whether it's through the new work we produce or the radical reinterpretations of classics we take to our audiences."
Headlong have also announced a series of short films in association with The Guardian that will bring leading theatre voices from across the UK together to look at both sides of the Brexit vote.
The company's 1984 continues to run at the Playhouse until 29 October and their production of James Graham's This House will receive its West End premiere when it opens at the Garrick Theatre on 30 November.
