Familiar faces return to Liverpool including theatre companies Kneehigh, Northern Broadsides and former Everyman Company member Matthew Kelly.
Following the announcement of The Lovely Bones, A Christmas Carol and Everyman rock ‘n’ roll panto The Snow Queen earlier this year, the Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse has revealed its full programme for Autumn Winter 2018. Book adaptations, comedians, music, familiar faces and new collaborations to join their in-house productions for the season.
Modern best-sellers and literary classics will visit both theatres throughout the season joining the stage premiere of Alice Sebold’s best-seller The Lovely Bones at the Everyman from 25th September – 5th October.
A production of Lisa Genova’s best-selling novel Still Alice visits the Playhouse from 6th-10th November with Sharon Small (About A Boy) as Alice – a clever, driven professional diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer’s. Uncompromising yet tender, this new adaptation of the award-winning novel provides a unique insight into the experience of a woman fighting to maintain her identity as her world changes.
Opening the season at the Playhouse is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s romantic comedy Persuasion – the story of a young woman swept off her feet by a dashing, but poor naval officer. With a talented cast of actor-musicians this production by Theatre 6 visits from 9th-13th October and is a masterclass of story-telling awash with love, loss and longing.
Announced earlier in the year, Spymonkey’s madcap take on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the much-anticipated festive production and sees the eccentric theatre company take over the Playhouse from 8th December – 12th January.
Another literary adaptation of Frankenstein heads to the Everyman in November, but this one comes with a twist…
Using nothing but mouths and a microphone, talented and dynamic vocal collective the Beatbox Collective present an electrifying poetic and political live concert of song, soundscape, improvised tracks and battles in Frankenstein: How to Make a Monster. Part of a new collaboration with Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), the production is at the Everyman on the 9th and 10th November and is a combination of creative urban beats with raw rhythmic storytelling.
Also featured as part of the BAC partnership is an innovative and mesmerising production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth by The Paper Cinema. Exploring the great Scottish play through illustration, puppetry and a live score, The Paper Cinema create epic battle scenes with hand-drawn puppets, sound effects and cinematic projection to re-imagine Macbeth as a cautionary tale for our times from 6th-8th November.
A new take on an ancient Greek myth by Young Everyman Playhouse (YEP) is presented in The Making of Medea in the Playhouse Studio from 31st October – 3rd November. In the form of a true crime documentary, this radical adaptation will feature the same vibrant energy seen in YEP’s production The City and the Value of Things in February this year.
With their celebrated physicality, Frantic Assembly present the stories of three young men coming home from war, as The Unreturning visits the Everyman from 16th-20th October. Based on the Wilfred Owen poem of the same name, The Unreturning explores the profound effect that conflict has on young lives.
1927 return to the Playhouse following a hugely successful run in 2017 with Golem with their radical and innovative brand of theatre. Like a graphic novel bursting into life, 1927 synchronise live music, performance and storytelling with stunning films and animation. The theatre company bring their international hit The Animals and Children Took to the Streets from 17-20 October.
With a combination of puppetry, film, music and live animation created by Liverpool actor and inventive theatre maker Mark Arends, Make do and Mend present The Missing Light – a story of two elderly friends on a surprising journey to reconcile their pasts and find what might lie within their futures. Moving and technically stunning, this production for ages 7+ visits the Everyman on 2nd and 3rd November.
Presenting a heart-warming children’s story of a duck – a very big duck – by the name of FUP, the eccentric and charming theatre company Kneehigh return to Liverpool to make the Everyman their temporary home once again from 9th-13th October. With foot-stomping music and puppetry, the Cornish company are back following in the footsteps of their raucous production The Tin Drum in 2017.
Back at the Playhouse from 30th October – 3rd November are Northern Broadsides with a furious and political satire of the working poor transposed to Brexit Britain with ‘They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!’. Directed by Wirral-born Conrad Nelson, a young woman gets mixed up in a riot at the local supermarket, she seizes the opportunity to stock her empty cupboards and those of her friend. But what will the two friends tell their law-abiding husbands?
Former Everyman Company actor Matthew Kelly returns to Liverpool in a production of Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art – a play within a play based on a fictional meeting between poet W. H. Auden and composer Benjamin Britten. Part of Everyman’s legendary company in 1974, alongside Julie Walters and Bill Nighy, Matthew Kelly performs in a multi-layered masterpiece exploring friendship, rivalry and heartache by one of the U.K.’s greatest ever playwrights.
As part of the Liverpool Irish Festival, Liverpool playwrights, comedians and internationally downloaded podcasts all feature between 18th and 28th October. Lizzie Nunnery’s To Have to Shoot Irishmen visits on 26th and 27th October joining in the city-wide Irish celebrations. The former Everyman young writer, award-winning playwright and writer of The Sum presents a story inspired by the Easter Rising in 1916, weaving movement and live folk song in to a stirring tale of militarism, corruption and the power of rebellion.
Also featuring as part of the festival, comedian Deborah Frances-White’s hilarious comedy podcast The Guilty Feminist will be recorded live on stage on Saturday 20th October. Deborah Frances-White and a panel of guests discuss their noble goals as 21st century feminists and the paradoxes and insecurities which undermine them, in front of a live audience.
David O’Doherty and his You Have to Laugh tour visits the Everyman for one night on Wednesday 24th October, as the first in a series of comedians and one-man shows. Sara Pascoe’s LadsLadsLads tour is on for one night Everyman on Tuesday 30th October and Mark Kermode takes audiences on a journey of musical misadventures in How Does it Feel? on Tuesday 13th November.
The varied and exciting season starts and ends with riotous rock ‘n’ roll. Opening the season at the Everyman to celebrate their 45th anniversary, legendary Liverpool band Deaf School will play two nights in the Everyman on Friday 21nd and Saturday 22nd September. First formed in 1973 on Hope Street – the band will transform the Everyman stage to feature cabaret style seating and perform their 2017 album Let’s Do This Again Next Week, plus Deaf School favourites including What a Way to End it All.
As always, the Everyman finishes its 2018 with a bang as the legendary Rock ‘n’ Roll Panto returns for 2018. A cast of talented actor musicians will this year tell the story of The Snow Queen, as notorious dame Francis Tucker and master of mischief Adam Keast return from 24th November to 19th January.
Gemma Bodinetz, artistic director of the Everyman & Playhouse said, “This season is a rich and wonderful cornucopia of dazzling work from favourite artists and companies.
Our Christmas shows are newly minted, but each draw on familiar stories re-imagined to hilarious effect by their creators. There is work from local artists, with writers Mark Arends and Lizzie Nunnery returning to delight young and not so young, as well as the seminal Deaf School returning to the Everyman… not to mention our very own YEP re-inventing a Greek Classic!
It’s a season buzzing with invention and new ways of creating experiences that will delight and live long in the memory. It’s a season where the familiar is spun into something fresh and beautifully unexpected. Even our beloved Playhouse will be seen anew as it proudly hosts Liverpool Biennial 2018 this summer…be prepared to be surprised”
General sale for all shows in the Everyman & Playhouse Autumn Winter 2018 programme will be available to the public from Monday 4th June. Tickets will be available by calling Box Office on 0151 709 4776 or at: https://www.everymanplayhouse.com/whats-on.