August 2024 Tour

Our first one week tour was an intimate and smashing success! Five VERY different plays brought to light the drama of living through the Great Depression with John Steinbeck’s classic Grapes Of Wrath, or the last workers standing during the decline of the American auto industry with Skeleton Crew. We experienced the highs and lows of one woman living through the Cold War in France with The Years, and a family struggling with a young matriarch’s bi-polar disorder in Next To Normal. Then to round it off we watched the physical and emotional struggle of pursuing one’s dreams with the classic A Chorus Line.

GUEST SPEAKER
Alex Eales - Set Designer

Forced to travel West in search of a promised land, the Joad family embark on an epic journey across America in the hope of finding work and a new life in California.

Their story is one of false hopes, wrong turns and broken dreams, but also a hymn to human kindness and a tribute to the endurance of the human spirit.

Carrie Cracknell (Julie, The Deep Blue Sea) directs Frank Galati’s award-winning adaptation of John Steinbeck’s masterpiece. Tony Award-winner Cherry Jones (The Glass Menagerie, Succession) is joined by Harry Treadaway (The Chemistry of Death, Penny Dreadful) and Natey Jones (Get Up, Stand Up! Death of a Salesman).

In 2008 Detroit, one of the city’s last surviving car factories is threatened with closure. A tight-knit group of workers face crushing economic reality. Torn between loyalty to each other and their own self-interest, can they hang on to their dreams, to their ambitions, to hope?

Detroit-born playwright Dominique Morisseau’s masterful feeling for voice and character brings depth and authenticity to a story about the human effects of a global financial crisis. A Tony Award-winning hit on Broadway in 2022, Olivier Award-winner Matthew Xia directs its UK premiere production.

GUEST SPEAKER
Pamela Nomvete - Actress

GUEST SPEAKER
Stephanie Bain - Head of Programming and Literary

Five different actors bring one woman’s personal and political story to life, set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing post-war Europe.

A child playing in the debris of the Second World War. Click. A student discovering parties and men’s bodies. Click. An activist fighting for the right to choose. Click. A wife picking out a velvet sofa. Click. A mother taking her eldest to judo. Click. A lover seducing a younger man. Click. A grandmother presenting her granddaughter to the camera. Click

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam’s new Artistic Director Eline Arbo directs her inventive stage adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux’s critically acclaimed “masterpiece” (The Guardian) The Years.

GUEST SPEAKER
Jack Wolfe - Actor

Next to Normal is an intimate exploration of family and illness, loss and grief. At its heart is Diana Goodman (Caissie Levy in an Olivier Award-nominated performance), a suburban wife and mother living with bipolar disorder and haunted by her past.

“As staged afresh in London under the astute eye of director Michael Longhurst, Next to Normal has a renewed sting. The result is transformative…there’s no more vital theatrical place to be.” Matt Wolf, The New York Times Critic’s Pick

New York City. 1975. On an empty Broadway stage, seventeen performers are put through their paces in the final, gruelling audition for a new Broadway musical. Only eight will make the cut.

A Chorus Line is a musical masterpiece that revolutionised Broadway, with creator Michael Bennett using real-life testimonies from late-night recording sessions with dancers. Celebrate the lives of theatre’s unsung heroes, as they tell searing stories of ambition, shattered hopes, and what it really costs to follow your dreams.