Wilton's Music Hall announces spring 2020 season

Wilton's Music Hall – the world's oldest working music hall – announces its 2020 spring season with productions including HMS Pinafore, Macbeth and the London International Mime Festival.

As previously announced, Wilton's first hosts the London International Mime Festival with The Strange Tale of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel from 14 to 18 January. A Told by an Idiot and Theatre Royal Plymouth co-production with Royal and Derngate Northampton and Unity Theatre Liverpool, the fictional story of Chaplin and Laurel travelling together to New York contains an original piano score composed by Mercury Award nominee Zoe Rahman.

The Watermill Ensemble returns to London with two new musical takes on Shakespeare classics, each performed in repertory. The company will combine Nina Simone and Billie Holliday in A Midsummer Night's Dream and stage their interpretation of Macbeth to a score containing Johnny Cash, The xx and the Rolling Stones. Each production will play alternate dates from 22 January to 15 February.

Mark Bruce Company returns with Return to Heaven from 28 February to 14 March), a piece that draws on the mythology of Ancient Egypt, while OperaGlass Works also return to the Wilton's Music Hall stage after their inaugural production of The Rake's Progress with Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw from 25 March to 4 April. This version has a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, story by Henry James, direction by Selina Cadell and design by Tom Piper, and is conducted by John Wilson. The opera tells the tale of a housekeeper and two young orphaned children who welcome a new governess from London to their old English country house.

Regan De Wynter Williams ends the spring season with Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore from 15 April to 9 May. The production will feature an all-male cast and will follow on the heels in the company's production of The Pirates of Penzance, which played at the venue earlier this year.

Wilton's Music Hall will also host the first Wilton's Music 4all Festival to support emerging talent across the arts. From 11 to 16 May, emerging creatives and artists will be given the opportunity to be mentored by industry experts, use rehearsal space, receive a commissioning fee and then perform at the festival itself, on the same stage as the likes of Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Kate Bush and Mumford and Sons.