2022/23 Season
84 Charing Cross Road
by Helene Hanff, adapted for the stage by James Roose-Evans
22 Septeber – 1 October 2022
This wonderful play is a dramatisation of letters between Helene Hanff, a struggling writer in New York and Frank Doel of Marks & Co. an antiquarian book store in London. In a sense, these are also love letters. They are about the love of good literature. The play takes place over a 20-year period from 1949 to 1969, and charts historical events including the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the rise of The Beatles through the correspondence between Helene and Frank, the delightfully dusty supplier of so many old volumes to Helene, who shows her gratitude through the years by sending “care packages” to the staff of Marks & Co.
Apologia
by Alexi Kaye Campbell
27 October – 5 November 2022
Kristin Miller is an eminent and successful art historian. As a young mother she followed her politics and vocation, storming Parisian barricades and moving to Florence. Her birthday should be a time of celebration but, when her two sons deliver their versions of the past, everyone must confront the cost of Kristin’s commitment to her passions.
Pygmalion
by George Bernard Shaw
27 October – 5 November 2022
The original play behind the musical My Fair Lady. Pygmalion both delighted and scandalised its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw’s feminist views. In Shaw’s hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite society. The one thing he overlooks is that his ‘creation’ has a mind of her own.
The Three Musketeers
by John Nicholson
12 – 21 January 2023
When the young and naive D'Artagnan sets out on his quest to become a King's musketeer, he immediately encounters the dangerous femme fatale, Milady de Winter. After discovering that the musketeers have been disbanded, he makes it his mission to get them reinstated. But will his feud with Milady thwart him? And who the heck is she? This riotous adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel by John Nicholson (Hound of the Baskervilles, Peepolykus) was originally performed by physical-comedy theatre company Le Navet Bete on a UK tour in 2019, with four actors playing over thirty characters. A funny, high-energy adaptation of a universally loved story, which is suitable for audiences of all ages. Swashbuckling and rollicking adventure guaranteed – convincing French accents, not so much.
Consent
by Nina Raine
16 – 25 February 2023
Why is Justice blind? Is she impartial? Or is she blinkered? Friends Ed and Tim take opposing briefs in a rape case. The key witness is a woman whose life seems a world away from theirs. At home, their own lives begin to unravel as every version of the truth is challenged. Consent, Nina Raine's powerful, painful, funny play, sifts the evidence from every side and puts Justice herself in the dock. It premiered as a co-production between the National Theatre and Out of Joint, directed by Roger Michell at the National Theatre in 2017, and transferred to the West End in 2018. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
The Rivals
by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
23 March – 1 April 2023
One of the best-known 18th century comedies of manners, Sheridan’s first play, and still his most popular. Lydia Languish, a young woman from a good family, holds to an impossible romantic ideal of love, and resolves only to marry a pauper. So Jack Absolute pretends to be a poor soldier in order to win her hand. Meanwhile, Jack’s father is attempting to procure the match through the proper channel of Lydia’s guardian, and Jack becomes a rival to himself, before he is finally challenged to duels by rival suitors in both his identities…
Di and Viv and Rose
by Amelia Bullmore
20 – 29 April 2023
A warm and funny play about female friendship. Aged 18, three women join forces. Life is fun. Living is intense. Together they feel unassailable. Crackling with wisdom and wit, Amelia Bullmore’s play Di and Viv and Rose is a humorous and thoughtful exploration of friendship’s impact on life and life’s impact on friendship.
Don't Dress for Dinner
by Marc Camoletti, adapted by Robin Hawdon
25 May – 3 June 2023
Bernard is planning a romantic weekend with his Parisian mistress, while his wife, Jacqueline is away. He has arranged for a cook to prepare gourmet delights and has invited his best friend Robert along as alibi. What could possibly go wrong? Well…. suppose Robert turns up, not realising why he’s been invited. Suppose Jacqueline and Robert are secret lovers and she’s determined not to leave for the weekend. Suppose the cook has to pretend to be the mistress and the mistress is unable to cook. Suppose everyone’s alibi gets confused with everyone else’s. An evening of hilarious confusion ensues.
Persuasion
by Jane Austen, adpated by Tim Luscombe
29 June – 8 July 2023
Anne Elliot fell deeply in love with a handsome young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, at the age of nineteen. But because he had neither fortune nor rank to recommend him, Anne’s mentor and friend, Lady Russell, persuaded her to break off the engagement. Eight years later, Anne has lived to regret her decision. She never stopped loving Frederick – and when he returns from sea a Captain, she can only watch as every eligible young woman falls at his feet. Can the pair rekindle a love that was lost but not forgotten? This new adaptation was commissioned and first produced by Salisbury Playhouse in 2011.