January 2023 Tour
This 2023 season sees a rather heavy dip into the strife of Americana to illuminate the timbre of global discussion and sentiment as seen through the keen lens of London’s artisans. Sexuality, corruption, betrayal of faith are on full display in the classic A Streetcar Named Desire. Themes of otherism are explored in wartime drama through Watch on the Rhine, and with a satirical eye gazing at social media’s part to play in civil discourse with The Unfriend. Racism is tackled with the stunning To Kill a Mockingbird, polarized political strife in The Best of Enemies, and both the rise and fall of the American dream through the epic The Lehman Trilogy. But throughout our struggles we still find love and hope in the childishly absurd, brought to life in the glowingly pantomimed modern fable, Mother Goose.
GUEST SPEAKER
Liz Ascroft - Set & Costume Design
Meet Mother Goose (McKellen) and her husband Vic (Bishop) in this uproarious pantomime. Running an Animal Sanctuary for waifs and strays, they live a wholesome life inside an abandoned Debenhams. But when a magical goose comes a-knocking, will fame & fortune get the better of them?!
The iconic, Pulitzer Prize winning Tennessee Williams play comes back to London. When Blanche DuBois (Patsy Ferran) unexpectedly visits her estranged sister Stella, she brings with her a past that will threaten their future. As Stella’s husband Stanley (Paul Mescal) stalks closer to the truth, Blanche’s fragile world begins to fracture. Reality and illusion collide and a violent conflict changes their lives forever.
GUEST SPEAKER
Rebecca Frecknall - Director
GUEST SPEAKER
Patricia Hodge - Actor
Summer 1940. On a peaceful morning in her Washington D.C. living room, widow Fanny Farrelly (Olivier Award winner Patricia Hodge) anxiously awaits the return of her daughter and her German husband, fleeing Europe with their children. As night falls, dark secrets emerge, and this American sanctuary becomes even more dangerous than what they left behind.
GUEST SPEAKER
Nick Powell - Composer
On a cold September morning in 1844, a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside dreaming of a new life in the new world. He is joined by his two brothers, and an American epic begins. 163 years later, the firm they establish – Lehman Brothers – spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy, triggering the largest financial crisis in history.
GUEST SPEAKER
David Harewood - Actor
1968 – a year of protest that divided America. As two men fight to become the next President, all eyes are on the battle between two others: the cunningly conservative William F. Buckley Jr., and the iconoclastic liberal Gore Vidal. Beliefs are challenged and slurs slung as these political idols feud nightly in a new television format, debating the moral landscape of a shattered nation. Little do they know they’re about to open up a new frontier in American politics, and transform television news forever…
GUEST SPEAKER
Steven Moffat - Writer
From the mind of Steven Moffat (Dr. Who, Sherlock) comes The Unfriend - While on holiday, Peter and Debbie befriend Elsa: a lusty Trump-loving widow from Denver. When Elsa invites herself to stay a few months later, they decide to look her up online. Too late, they learn the truth about their holiday friend. Danger has just boarded a flight to London! What began as a casual, transient friendship is now a threat to the lives of their children! Peter and Debbie now face the ultimate challenge of the modern world - How to you protect all that you love from mortal peril without seeming a bit impolite?
Aaron Sorkin's retelling of Harper Lee's classic - Set in Maycomb, Alabama in 1934, To Kill a Mockingbird has provided American literature with some of its most indelible characters: lawyer Atticus Finch, the tragically wronged Tom Robinson, Atticus’ daughter Scout, her brother Jem, their housekeeper and caretaker Calpurnia, and the reclusive Arthur “Boo” Radley. For the past six decades and for every generation, this story, its characters and portrait of small-town America have helped to, and continue to, inspire conversation and change.