Peter Brook to premiere new work at the Young Vic in 2016

The Young Vic has announced its first two shows for 2016 which will see Peter Brook revisiting The Mahabharata and a stage adaptation of Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing.

Inspired by Brook’s legendary production of The Mahabharata, which originally ran for 9 hours when it was first produced in 1985, the UK premiere of Battlefield, a new work directed by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne, will run from 3 – 27 February 2016.

The cast for the production – which premieres at Théatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris before coming to the Young Vic – features Carole Karemera (Sometimes in April), Jared McNeill (The Valley of Astonishment), Ery Nzaramba (The Suit) and Sean O’Callaghan (Beyond Caring).

Artistic director David Lan said of the production:

"Peter Brook’s staging of The Mahabharata is acknowledged as one of the seminal theatre works of the 20th century. Now, in Battlefield, he and his longtime collaborators Marie-Hélène Estienne and Jean-Claude Carrière explore the contemporary immediacy of just one of its many stories: the moment when the heroes of the epic face each other before a great battle. Peter and his team are among our closest theatre friends. We’re as delighted as always to welcome them to the Young Vic."

In the second production of 2016, Aoife Duffin (Spring Awakening, The Crucible) will reprise her celebrated performance in Annie Ryan‘s stage adaptation of Eimear McBride’s debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. The Young Vic will play host to the production's London premiere in the Maria studio from 17 February – 19 March 2016, following a run at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.

Lan also announced that Mike Bartlett's Olivier Award-winning Bull, which sold out in the Maria studio earlier this year, will return to the venue for a limited run from 11 December – 9 January 2016.

Tickets for the above productions go on general sale on Wednesday 5 August at 10am.