Orange Tree announces new productions for next year

The Orange Tree theatre in Richmond has announced further programming for its 2022 Recovery Season.

These include the world premiere of Sonali Bhattacharyya's Two Billion Beats (5 February to 5 March), directed by Nimmo Ismail. Centring on two teenage sisters, it's billed as "an insightful, moving and tremendously funny coming-of-age story about the unfairness of growing up in a world where you don't make the rules."

Next up is German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz's Tom Fool (12 March to 16 April). Directed by Diyan Zora, it promises "A dark and unnervingly funny play about how capitalism creeps into the minutiae of one family's life, just at the moment women started to change the rules of the game."

Oscar Toeman will direct the UK premiere of Pamela Carter's The Misfortune of the English (25 April to 28 May), based on the true story of a group of schoolboys who visited Nazi Germany in 1936. And completing the season from 8 June to 23 July is artistic director Paul Miller's first major revival of Martin Crimp's translation of The False Servant by Pierre Marivaux.

All productions will be made available to watch live-streamed or on-demand. In celebration of the theatre's 50th Anniversary Year from 31 December 2021, the Museum of Richmond will host an exhibition OT:50 50 Years of the Orange Tree, which opens on 15 December 2021 and runs until 31 August 2022.

Miller said: "We are all reconnecting with society and seeing the world from new perspectives, and in our 50th anniversary year, this season at the OT aims to further this process, as we continue to reconnect with our audiences and the artists who make theatre happen. The great Recovery continues!"