Preview West Yorkshire Playhouse's Autumn/Winter Season
A look ahead to what's happening at Leeds' major theatre later this year
Preview: West Yorkshire Playhouse's Autumn/Winter Season
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After a sobering glimpse down the barrel of forthcoming Arts Council cuts at a recent press briefing, the West Yorkshire Playhouse announced its Autumn/Winter season. Overall the programme is lighter than some of its predecessors, with the glaring exception of a new play by William Nicholson which supplies the customary portion of socio-political angst.
Apparently it’s the golden anniversary of Billy Liar’s premiere in 1960. Therefore the theatre to which the play would have been indigenous, had the WYP existed back then, is deploying this fact as the tidy rationale behind its new production. (Curiously, the Playhouse has not mentioned author Keith Waterhouse’s death last year as part of the production’s backdrop.) The tale of a young man who escapes from his arid existence as an undertaker’s clerk through his compulsion to fantasy, Billy Liar originally took the form of a 1959 novel. It’s set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton, and the celebrated film adaptation by Waterhouse and Willis Hall was shot in Bradford. The show will run in September and October, and is to be directed by Nick Bagnall, making his WYP debut, and designed by Colin Richmond.
WYP artistic director Ian Brown’s new production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It will premiere a fortnight later. The play is a pastoral comedy about the consequences of Duke Frederick usurping his brother Duke Senior’s throne, which takes place largely in an ethereal forest and are among the sauciest and most gender-bent events populating Shakespeare’s canon. Brown’s team is to include designer Ruari Murchison, with whom he collaborated at the end of last year on The Secret Garden.
William Nicholson’s Crash is to be the first of three newly commissioned pieces to premiere during the season. Probably most familiar for his work on the films Shadowlands and Gladiator, Nicholson has now turned his (clenched) hand to walloping those pesky bankers. However, he assures us that ultimately his analysis of the problems exposed by the financial crisis is a nuanced one. Following her stirring production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Sarah Esdaile returns to the Playhouse to direct the show.
Invariably Christmas is the domain of the littleuns, and the Playhouse is to observe its custom of producing a dramatic banquet for all in the larger Quarry auditorium and a less bustling, but equally evocative, number in the Courtyard for those on the cusp of entering uniform. The Quarry will play host to a new musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by Bryony Lavery and Jason Carr, which is a joint undertaking with Playhouse pal Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Meanwhile the writer-director duo of Mike Kenny and Gail McIntyre will attempt to reclaim Aladdin from the dual captors of Disney and panto.
Posted on Wednesday 21st July 2010
SW
West Yorkshire Playhouse
Playhouse Square, Quarry Hill, Leeds, LS2 7UP
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