Lyceum 23/24 season ticket launched

May 30 2023 | By More

Lyceum announces biggest season in years

by Hugh Simpson

The Lyceum has announced its 2023/24 subscription season, with the biggest programme since 2018. A strongly Scottish and literary theme is balanced by a series of collaborations with companies from Scotland, the UK and further afield.

Artistic Director David Greig is also providing a new play for the first time in his Lyceum stint, as well as directing for the first time since 2017’s Glory On Earth.

The Lyceum. Pic Lyceum

Launching the season, Greig stressed just what a difficult time Scottish theatre has had in the last few years – something which undoubtedly contributed to the necessarily truncated 2022/23 season. That season was an artistic and financial success.

Rave reviews flooded in, with not only apparent bankers such as Kidnapped or An Edinburgh Christmas Carol racking up huge ticket numbers; the likes of You Bury Me and Castle Lennox, not such obvious seat-fillers, also performed above expectations.

Season-ticket holders, however, remain the lifeblood of the Lyceum, with their love of theatre making them willing to commit to a whole slate of shows, some very much an unknown quantity, months in advance. Greig’s affection for them is palpable, although his description of them as the equivalent of a football team’s ‘ultras’ may be a little tongue in cheek.

The pandemic and the resulting reluctance of some to return to the theatre immediately has certainly affected the number of season-ticket holders; the number, previously always some 3000 – 4000, was cut in half post-COVID. Many of those missing subscribers may be tempted to return by a full programme, with booking for all six shows netting a 20% discount, as well as reductions on additional shows (including the much-anticipated Christmas Snow Queen), programmes and refreshments.

The subscriber season

The season opens with Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape (4-14 October 2023), a collaboration with Pitlochry Festival Theatre written by one of Scotland’s most distinguished playwrights, Peter Arnott, and directed by David Greig.

Described by Greig as ‘Chekhovian’ and ‘a state of the nation and a state of the family play’, it is set in a Perthshire country house during the 2014 Independence referendum, the play revolves around the retired academic and political heavyweight George Rennie, who gathers his friends and family for an announcement.

Jekyll and Hyde (13 – 27 January 2024) by Gary McNair was first staged at Reading Rep last year and is being remounted for its first Scottish production. Directed by Micheal Fentiman, the one-person adaptation promises a beguiling return to the Edinburgh roots of Stevenson’s renowned tale of the Caledonian Antisyzygy.

Greig’s Two Sisters premieres from 10 February – 2 March 2024. Directed by Wils Wilson (notable collaborator with Greig on Prudencia Hart), it is a three-hander set in a static caravan park, where the two adult sisters of the title spent their childhood holidays. Now, however, they have changed and the park has changed. Explorations of ‘how we are and how we got there’ are promised, as well as a chorus of young people and the audience’s own experiences of teenage holidays being incorporated into the performance.

Emma Rice of Wise Children will be adapting and directing Blue Beard (12 – 30 March 2024), a co-production with Birmingham Rep, HOME Manchester and York Theatre Royal. Described by Greig as ‘furious, feminist and funny’ (with at least one other f-word somewhere in that sequence), this recasting of the fairy tale will feature ‘an exploration of curiosity and consent, violence and vengeance – all through an intoxicating lens of music, wit and tender truth’. No doubt the endless invention and stunning visuals that characterise all of Rice’s work will also be in evidence.

The Girls of Slender Means (13 April – 4 May 2024) is an adaptation by Gabriel Quigley of Muriel Spark’s celebrated novella of post-war financial embarrassment and a shared designer dress. Greig believes that not only is Spark the literary equivalent of the Lyceum, but that the work speaks directly to the economic climate of today’s ‘girls of slender means’. The play will be directed by Roxana Silbert, best known in Edinburgh for her time at the Traverse.

The season closes with a new version by Morna Young of perhaps the most celebrated Scottish novel of all, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song (28 May – 8 June 2024). Directed by Finn den Hertog and with music by Finn Anderson, this will be a ‘radically reimagined’ production, with Lossiemouth native Young well placed to ‘tell the history of Scotland through a tragic heroine’.

The recent season at the Lyceum has shown just what new insights can be found in familiar titles, and with the addition of intriguing new works, the new season is an exciting prospect.

Existing season ticket holders can renew their subscriptions online. New subscribers can create an account online and the discount will be applied automatically, or phone the Lyceum box office on 0131 248 4848. Further details on season tickets are here: https://lyceum.org.uk/.

Ticket details on all Lyceum shows are here: https://lyceum.org.uk/whats-on.

ENDS

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  1. Marion Donohoe says:

    Happy to be called a Lyceum ‘ultra’ having been a season ticket holder for many years. Looking forward to a great season of plays.