Paines Plough unveils 2025 season plans

Paines Plough has announced its plans for 2025, including two new productions set to premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before embarking on national tours.

The company will present Consumed by Karis Kelly in a co-production with Belgrade Theatre, Sheffield Theatres and the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, in association with the Lyric Belfast.

Directed by joint artistic director Katie Posner, the play follows four generations of Northern Irish women gathered under one roof for a 90th birthday. Kelly won the Women’s Prize for Playwriting in 2022 for the piece. The play will preview in Coventry from 25 to 26 July before its Edinburgh run at the Traverse Theatre from 31 July to 24 August, followed by a tour to Coventry, Leeds, Guildford and Sheffield in the autumn.

Paines Plough also returns to Summerhall’s Tech Cube Zero with Ordinary Decent Criminal, a new play by Ed Edwards. Mark Thomas plays Frankie, a recovering addict entering a liberal prison experiment in the wake of the Strangeways riots. Directed by Charlotte Bennett, the piece follows Edwards’ previous collaborations with the company.

After its Edinburgh run, the production will tour to venues in Exeter, Plymouth, Brighton, Canterbury, Oxford, Scarborough, Stockton-on-Tees, Selby, Coventry, Leeds, Chichester, Nottingham, Manchester and York from October to December.

Alongside its Fringe activity, Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe will transfer to @sohoplace for a limited West End season from 1 August to 27 September. The show has been covered here.

This year also sees the continuation of Paines Plough’s writer development schemes including Tour the Writer and its partnership with the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, which recently closed submissions with a record 1,275 entries.

The company has also announced Corey Weekes as its 2025 Playwright Fellowship recipient and is supporting Dipo Baruwa-Etti’s new play Children of the West as part of Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama’s NEW’25 festival.