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A Streetcar Named Desire headlines spring 2012 season as the Everyman and Playhouse go global

24th November 2011

A new production of Tennessee Williams’s classic A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz, will be the first Playhouse production of 2012. It will be followed by a collaboration with Shakespeare’s Globe on Henry V. Continuing a global theme, two Everyman productions will reach out internationally, with Macbeth available as a digital download and The Caretaker touring to Australia and the USA.

The cornerstone of the Playhouse’s spring season will be A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, with Amanda Drew as Blanche Dubois, Sam Troughton as Stanley Kowalski and Leanne Best as Stella Kowalski, in Williams’s exquisite Pulitzer Prize-winning drama. The cast will also feature Annabelle Apsion, Matthew Flynn and Alan Stocks.

Amanda Drew’s recent stage credits include Enron (Headlong Theatre), Butley (Duchess Theatre) and Faces In The Crowd (Royal Court). She has also appeared in Parlour Song, A Chain Play and Enemies at the Almeida. Her screen credits include The Other Man and Dr. May Wright in EastEnders. Sam Troughton has played lead roles in Romeo & Juliet and Morte d’Arthur for the RSC, while his other theatre credits include As You Like It (Sheffield Crucible) and Buried Child (National Theatre). His film and television credits include roles in Vera Drake, Robin Hood and Silent Witness (both BBC). Leanne Best’s stage credits include The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Hypochondriac and Our Country’s Good at Liverpool Playhouse as well as the national tour of Corrie! Her television credits include Moving On and Wire In The Blood.

After highly acclaimed productions of classics Macbeth and Tartuffe this year, Gemma Bodinetz returns to 20th century American drama following the critical success and popularity of All My Sons (2006) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (2005). Streetcar will reunite Gemma with designer Gideon Davey (All My Sons, Liverpool Playhouse; Radamisto, English National Opera) and lighting designer Paul Keogan (Tartuffe, Liverpool Playhouse; The Taming of The Shrew, RSC) and will be the first time Tennessee Williams has been produced by the Playhouse in over 30 years.

In April the Playhouse will collaborate with Shakespeare’s Globe on HENRY V which will open its national tour in Liverpool and reach the Globe Theatre in June. The production will be directed by the Globe’s Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole.

In May Philip Wilson (Noel Coward Double Bill, Dr Faustus, Noises Off) returns to the Playhouse to direct Alan Ayckbourn’s THE NORMAN CONQUESTS. Ayckbourn’s ingenious trilogy set over one weekend in different parts of a rundown country house is a comic and poignant portrayal of familial tensions played out from three different viewpoints. Tickets for TABLE MANNERS, LIVING TOGETHER and ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN will go on sale in March 2012. The plays may be watched in any order and there will be opportunities to watch the full trilogy in one day.

The Playhouse also continues to bring the highest quality theatre companies from around the UK to Liverpool.

The season begins with the multiple award-winning MOGADISHU by Vivienne Franzmann, a Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester and Lyric Hammersmith production which explores the clash of youth, class, race and justice.

Audiences who enjoyed Spymonkey’s Moby Dick in 2009 and Kneehigh’s visit with Hansel and Gretel will be treated to a collaboration between Kneehigh writer Carl Grosse and the anarchic Spymonkey company with OEDIPUSSY.

The critically acclaimed Bristol Old Vic production of SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS arrives following a West End run this Christmas, in a delightful and imaginative production directed by Tom Morris, Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic and co-director of the National Theatre’s Tony Award-winning international hit War Horse.

Shared Experience return to the Playhouse to bring to life the astonishing tale of MARY SHELLEY. Helen Edmundson’s new play explores Shelley’s remarkable life: her controversial philosopher father, her scandalous elopement aged 16 and how she wrote a novel, so radical in its ideology, that in 1817 she changed the literary landscape forever.

For Liverpool's eager dance audiences, the Playhouse is welcoming back internationally renowned contemporary dance company Phoenix Dance Theatre for two performances of CROSSING POINTS.

This has been a hugely successful year for Playhouse productions away from Liverpool with Ghost Stories in the West End, Oedipus at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a national tour of Tartuffe and the London transfer of The Swallowing Dark, which has been nominated for five Offie Awards. This philosophy of taking the best of our work to a wider audience continues in 2012.

In December, after a sell-out run at the Playhouse, Graham Linehan’s adaptation of THE LADYKILLERS will move to the Gielgud Theatre, London, where it is initially booking until April 2012.

Earlier this year David Morrissey returned to the Everyman where he began his career to play MACBETH in the final production before the theatre’s redevelopment. Now, that highly acclaimed production will reach a much wider audience in Digital Theatre’s remarkable film, available from Thursday 24th November to watch online or to keep as a digital download from www.digitaltheatre.com.

In March, Jonathan Pryce will reprise his acclaimed depiction of Pinter’s Davies when THE CARETAKER embarks on a world tour. It will feature at the Adelaide Festival before going to the Curran Theatre, San Francisco, Southern Theatre, Columbus, Ohio and then to New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music for two months.

 

 

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