Lyceum Season 2017-18

Apr 27 2017 | By More

Details of 17/18 season announced.

The Lyceum is to stage ten shows in its 2017-18 season, the second in David Greig’s tenure as artistic director and the final year in the current funding round.

For the first time this century the season will be without any plays by either Shakespeare or a playwright who is on the school syllabus. Instead, Greig has continued his policy of moulding a season to reflect our troubled times.

Roxana Silbert. Pic: John James

The other notable first for the season is that a majority of the writers and directors involved with the productions are women.

Greig says that in the season, the Lyceum: “responds to a world in turmoil by staging a series of ten bold plays, a mix of undiscovered classics, new plays, and fresh adaptations, each telling a truly theatrical story which reflects directly on the great issues of the day.”

Six of the productions will be included in the Subscription Season. Season Ticket renewal packs are currently being prepared and will start landing on doorsteps through the post during May 2017. Public sale of shows will start in June 2017

The season kicks off with the Birmingham Rep’s production and Scottish premiere of What Shadows by Chris Hannan. Directed by Roxana Silbert and starring Ian McDiarmid, it deals with Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speach and those who had to cope with its toxic fallout.

The most intriguing production of the season is Cockpit by Bridget Boland, a 1948 West End hit. Wils Wilson is directing this site-specific piece, that will turn the Lyceum into the Hoftheater of Deutscheshof, where displaced persons shelter and await instruction following the provincial German town’s occupation by British troops.

Wind Resistance

Wils Wilson is also directing Karine Polwart’s Wind Resistance, which moves up to the main stage for a limited run, after gaining five star rave reviews in the Rehearsal space at the 2016 EIF, and selling out its performances at Celtic Connections earlier this year. This show is not included in the subscriber season.

The Christmas show, not part of the subscriber season, will be the previously announced new adaptation of The Arabian Nights by Suhayla El-Bushra and directed by Joe Douglas.

The new year kicks off with a collaboration between Fleur Darkin of Scottish Dance Theatre and Jemima Levick of Stellar Quines. They are co-adapting and co-directing Marguerite Duras’s semi-autobiographical novel The Lover, which details her affair as a teenager with an older, wealthy Chinese man in 1920s Vietnam.

Comedy is the key to the Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem, her response to George Farquhar’s romantic comedy, The Beaux’ Stratagem. Tony Cownie is on adapting and directing duties for this, which he will set in 1780s Edinburgh.

Ionesco

The Lyceum’s co-production with the EIF of Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco in a new version by Zinnie Harris will open for a limited run at this summer’s festival, before returning to the Lyceum stage for a proper run in late March.

David Greig’s own adaptation of Strindberg, Creditors, will get its Scottish premiere in late April, in a production directed by Stewart Laing, who was previously the artistic director of Untitled Projects.

In his first season, David Greig had intended to stage The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other by Peter Handke this June. It turns out that the project – involving a big community ensemble – needed longer to prepare and it will now play for three nights, 31 May to 2 June, 2018, wrapping up the season.

But that isn’t all. James Ley’s Love Song to Lavender Menace, the Village Pub Theatre founder’s play about Edinburgh’s first LGBT and feminist bookshop, has had various performed readings and semi-staged productions. Now it will get a full production with an eight-day run in the Lyceum’s rehearsal space this Autumn.

The Lyceum 2017-18 season in full

What Shadows
By Chris Hannan
Directed by Roxana Silbert
September 7 to 23, 2017

Cockpit
By Bridget Boland
Directed by Wils Wilson
October 6 to 28, 2017

Love Song to Lavender Menace (staged in Lyceum rehearsal space. Not part of subscriber season).
By James Ley
Directed by Ros Philips
October 12 to 21, 2017

Wind Resistance (not part of subscriber season).
By Karine Polwart
Directed by Wils Wilson
November 3 to 11, 2017

Arabian Nights (Christmas show, not part of subscriber season).
Adapted by Suhayla El-Bushra
Directed by Joe Douglas
November 25 2017 to January 6, 2018.
https://lyceum.org.uk/whats-on/production/the-arabian-nights

The Lover
By Marguerite Duras
Adapted for the stage by Fleur Darkin and Jemima Levick
Co-directed by Fleur Darkin and Jemima Levick
January 20 to February 3, 2018

The Belle’s Stratagem
By Hannah Cowley
Adapted and directed by Tony Cownie
February 15 to March 10, 2018

Rhinoceros
By Eugène Ionesco
In a new version by Zinnie Harris
Directed by Murat Daltaban
March 23 to April 7, 2018

Creditors
By August Strindberg
Adapted by David Greig
Directed by Stewart Laing
April 27 to May 12, 2018

The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (Not part of subscriber season).
By Peter Handke
In a translation by Meredith Oaks
Directed by Wils Wilson
May 31 10 June 2 June, 2018

ENDS

 

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  1. Lyceum season introduction : All Edinburgh Theatre.com | Apr 27 2017