Theatre News

Barbican announces new season

Highlights include Jude Law returning to the stage and three dance premieres

Doctor Faustus, Jude Law and SmallWaR all feature as part of the Barbican's season
Doctor Faustus, Jude Law and SmallWaR all feature as part of the Barbican's season
© Helen Maybanks/Dan Wooller/Daily Dolores

The Barbican Theatre have announced their new season with highlights including the previously announced Obsession with Jude Law, three dance premieres and Inter_rupted, a new show from Indian dancer and choreographer Aditi Mangaldas.

As well as the RSC's four previously announced productions which transfer to the Barbican – The Alchemist, Doctor Faustus, Cymbeline and King Lear, the season will include The Machine, a new interactive show from circus company Collectif and then… winners of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award 2016. The show begins when audiences clock in and set mechanisms into motion, from conveyer belts to an overhead transporter and control desk (27 September to 8 October).

Elswehere in the season, Valentijn Dhaenens pays tribute to the art of speech-making in BigMouth, and companion piece SmallWaR focuses on the myriad men and women who have been to war (13 to 17 September). The Michael Clark Company present New Work 2016 (6 to 15 October) and the Royal Ballet will perform Philip Glass at 80: Les Enfants Terribles (27 to 29 January 2017), a radical dance-opera which follows the tale of siblings Paul and Lise who live together in an isolated room.

Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company's Inter_rupted (20 to 22 October), from Indian dance maker Aditi Mangaldas, infuses the ancient art form of kathak with 21st-century sound, rhythm and light. Dancers including Mangaldas are joined by a group of musicians for a piece that explores the body's fragility, disintegration and renewal.

Ivo Van Hove and the Toneelgroep Amsterdam will have a residency at the Barbican in 2017, performing four plays in total. As well as Obsession, there will be a return of Roman Tragedies in March, then later in the year there will be a double bill After the Rehearsal/Persona, based on the films of Ingmar Bergman.