Lyric Hammersmith announces spring 2016 season

The Lyric Hammersmith have announced their spring 2016 season with highlights including the first professional production of Simon Stephens' Herons since the play premiered in 2001.

Directed by Lyric boss Sean Holmes, Herons will kick the season off in January (15 January to 13 February 2016). The show tells the story of fourteen-year-old Billy, whose life has been made a misery by a gang. After their brutal campaign of terror becomes too much, it finally pushes him towards a terrible and violent act.

A Midsummer Night's Dream returns to the Lyric next. A co-production with Filter Theatre, the riotous reinterpretation of one of Shakespeare's best loved plays returns after its critically acclaimed 2012 run. The show features music from members of The London Snorkelling Team and follows the classic tale of young lovers and warring fairies with many unique twists (20 February 19 March).

To close the season, the Royal Opera present two contemporary operas. Pleasure by Mark Simpson runs 12 to 14 May and features British soprano Lesley Garrett who plays Val, a lady who works the toilets in a hedonistic gay club and whose night is changed forever when a young, beautiful man leaves her a gift.

Philip Venables adapts Sarah Kane's notorious 4:48 Psychosis into an opera which runs 24 to 28 May. Kane, who took her own life in 1999 at the age of 28, felt that 4.48 in the morning was a time of great clarity, when one's mind could realise its darkest thoughts.

Sean Holmes, artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith said: "We are delighted to announce our 2016 spring season – a provocative and playful programme of reimagined texts. The return of Filter's crazed Dream; a disrespectful revival of Herons – Simon Stephens's searing examination of pained youth – and the premiere of two radical new operas."