Theatre News

Lyric Hammersmith Theatre announces 130th anniversary season

Four new productions will take the venue through 2025

Alex Wood

Alex Wood

| London |

8 October 2024

The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, © Helen Murray
The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, © Helen Murray

The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in west London has unveiled four major productions that form its 130th anniversary season.

Speaking to WhatsOnStage yesterday, artistic director Rachel O’Riordan said of her new programme, taking place at the second-largest subsidised theatre in London: “With each of these productions, it feels like you’re simultaneously looking back and looking forward all at the same time. It’s a slightly strange and fascinating combination of the new and the old, but a chance, after 130 years, to celebrate the fact that at the Lyric… we can do a real different programme, with four incredible writers bringing new work to our stages.”

Playwright Gary Owen will reunite with O’Riordan for a new, contemporary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts, running from 10 April to 10 May 2025. The show follows a family grappling with the after-effects of a patriarch’s death. The pair will be following up on the five-star success of Iphigenia in Splott, which was transferred to the Lyric 18 months ago and opened to another salvo of all-out raves.

Speaking about a fifth production with Owen, O’Riordan said: “What Gary is doing with the play is quite chilling. The intergenerational trauma is embedded into Ibsen’s work, but Gary is really foregrounding it in this version.”

She said that, in customary Owen style, the show isn’t a direct adaptation of Ibsen: “The son, Oswald, through the course of the play comes to realise that perhaps he has inherited from his father something that is not simply syphilis, but perhaps a more latent toxic masculinity.”

Following this will be a new adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel Marriage Material, staged from 22 May to 21 June. The show centres on a corner shop in Wolverhampton, and the family who run it.

Writer Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti said this morning: “I’m thrilled at the prospect of bringing Sathnam Sanghera’s wonderful book to life. It’s been a privilege to take on this powerful and authentic story of a Punjabi family, exploring what people gain and lose as they make new lives in the UK.

“With vivid characters who face unspeakable pressures, yet remain full of ambition, Marriage Material is an emotional, rich, joyful piece and so relevant for today – a perfect play for the Lyric’s beautiful stage.”

O’Riordan emphasised how important it is, within Hammersmith, to stage plays for every part of the local community: “We have like a real diversity and multiplicity of voices… pulling people together from all different areas, backgrounds.”

After this will come the eagerly anticipated UK premiere of hit musical Sing Street, based on the film of the same name. We’ve covered that in more detail here.

The fourth show in the season will be a new version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, adapted by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm and directed by Emma Baggott. The show runs from 11 September to 11 October.

Speaking about this new take on Dracula, O’Riordan said that Malcolm intended to “scare the pants off people” with her new version of Stoker’s classic, while foregrounding female characters like Mina Harker: “Is fear all created in the imagination or is it actually Dracula? Or is it what we think Dracula might be?” She also said that the Frank Matcham-era auditorium will be the perfect setting for what the team have planned.

The venue has also launched a Bill Cashmore Award for one-act plays, open to anyone aged 18 to 30. It will also collaborate with Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s Gangs Violence Exploitation Unit to present Cross The Line – a brand new touring show visiting schools, youth clubs and pupil referral units.

Tickets for the season’s shows are on sale below.

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