Donmar Warehouse announces new London venue

The Donmar Warehouse has set up a new temporary venue in Kings Cross.

Branching out of its Covent Garden home, the Donmar will open a new, in-the-round, 420-seat temporary theatre at Kings Cross in association with Theatre Tracks.

The north London venue will host Phyllida Lloyd's all-female company which will play a 13-week repertory season from 23 September to 17 December 2016. The director will stage revivals of Julius Caesar and Henry IV and a new production of The Tempest, all set in a women's prison.

Harriet Walter will play Prospero in The Tempest which marks her reunion with Lloyd after they worked together on the 2012 all-female version of Julius Caesar and the 2014 production of Henry IV. Walter returns to the roles of Brutus and Henry IV in the Kings Cross revivals.

Walter will be joined by a number of the Henry IV and Julius Caesar cast which includes Jade Anouka, Shiloh Coke, Jackie Clune, Karen Dunbar, Clare Dunne, Zainab Hasan, Jennifer Joseph, Sophie Stanton, Sharon Rooney, Caroline Valdés, Sheila Atim and Martina Laird.

Crossing the pond with the previously announced Privacy and Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Tempest will transfer to New York's St. Ann's Warehouse in January 2017.

The Donmar have also announced they will make 25 per cent of all tickets free to 25 year-olds and under with their new scheme 'Young and Free'. Building on the success of the Front Row ticket scheme, all of the front row for the Shakespeare productions will be free to 25s and under through the initiative. Tickets will be released throughout the run on a weekly basis.

Artistic director Josie Rourke commented: "I remember very clearly the furore created by the idea of an all-female Shakespeare, when Phyllida Lloyd first staged Julius Caesar with Harriet Walter in 2012. Lloyd's work with this diverse, all-female company has been genuinely ground-breaking and in the intervening four years, theatre has got into the fast lane of debate and change. It’s time, with these Young and Free tickets to join together our question about who gets to play these roles with a renewed mission for who gets to experience them."