CHICHESTER FESTIVAL THEATRE ANNOUNCES FESTIVAL 2018 SEASON
Chichester Festival Theatre’s Festival 2018, the second season under the leadership of Artistic Director Daniel Evans and Executive Director Rachel Tackley is announced today. Building on the success of a record-breaking season in 2017, it offers a kaleidoscopic array of classics, musicals and new work – illustrating the breadth of CFT’s work and determination to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
Festival 2018 includes classic comedies, powerful contemporary dramas and
timely revivals, as well as two musicals and a family show
New plays by Charlotte Jones, Bryony Lavery and Laura Wade
Headline actors include Rufus Hound, Penelope Keith, Amanda Root, Oliver Ford Davies, Susannah Fielding, Caroline Quentin, Charles Edwards, Paul Jesson,
Clare Burt, Joanna Riding and Gary Wilmot
Directors new to the Festival are Natalie Abrahami, Michael Blakemore, Tinuke Craig, Sean Foley, Kate Hewitt and Dale Rooks, alongside Daniel Evans, Jonathan Munby, Alan Strachan and Samuel West
Over 20,000 tickets at £10 in the Festival Theatre
Major revivals of classic and contemporary dramas:
Sean Foley directs Rufus Hound in Noël Coward’s PRESENT
LAUGHTER
debbie tucker green’s random and generations are directed in a double
bill by Tinuke Craig
Penelope Keith, Amanda Root and Oliver Ford Davies lead the cast of
Enid Bagnold’s THE CHALK GARDEN, directed by Alan Strachan
Jonathan Munby directs Wycherley’s Restoration comedy THE
COUNTRY WIFE, with Susannah Fielding
Michael Frayn’s COPENHAGEN receives a 20th anniversary revival by
original director Michael Blakemore
COCK by Mike Bartlett is directed by Kate Hewitt
Two musicals directed by Daniel Evans:
ME AND MY GIRL, with Caroline Quentin
Clare Burt, Joanna Riding and Gary Wilmot lead the cast of FLOWERS
FOR MRS HARRIS
Three new plays:
THE MEETING by Charlotte Jones, directed by Natalie Abrahami
THE WATSONS by Laura Wade, directed by Samuel West
Bryony Lavery adapts David Walliams’s THE MIDNIGHT GANG, with
music & lyrics by Joe Stilgoe, directed by Dale Rooks
Chichester Festival Youth Theatre presents Rufus Norris’s version of
SLEEPING BEAUTY in the Festival Theatre for Christmas
10,000 £5 PROLOGUE tickets for 16 – 25 year olds
Three Festival 2017 productions will transfer to London this year
Daniel Evans and Rachel Tackley said: ‘We’re enormously grateful for the warm welcome extended to us by our local community and those visiting from further afield during our first season, which welcomed Chichester’s largest-ever Festival audience.
‘Festival 2018 is all about breadth of choice, perfectly illustrated by our opening plays: Noël Coward in the Festival Theatre and debbie tucker green in the Minerva. We have three new plays by outstanding playwrights Charlotte Jones, Bryony Lavery and Laura Wade, and revivals of significant contemporary work by Mike Bartlett and Michael Frayn. We look forward to welcoming three of the UK’s brightest young directors – Natalie Abrahami, Tinuke Craig and Kate Hewitt – to Chichester for the first time, alongside welcome debuts by Michael Blakemore and Sean Foley. And we’re thrilled that our brilliant Dale Rooks, who has given us so many outstanding Youth Theatre productions including Running Wild, makes her Festival debut with a show for all ages.
‘This season we will achieve a 50:50 gender balance in our acting company, which includes some of the most exciting and beloved names in British theatre. We’re pleased to have over 20,000 tickets available at £10 in the Festival Theatre – double the number of previous years and now available at every performance; and the price of tickets for our rapidly growing Prologue scheme for 16 to 25 year olds remains at £5. During 2017 we reached 62,000 people aged 0 – 92 through our community and education outreach programmes; among these is our recently launched CFT Buddies scheme, providing a companion for elderly or
socially isolated people.
‘Finally, we’re delighted that three Festival 2017 productions will reach a wider audience in London this year: Caroline, Or Change at Hampstead, and Quiz and King Lear in the West End.’
FESTIVAL 2018 PRODUCTIONS – APRIL TO NOVEMBER 2018
PRESENT LAUGHTER by Noël Coward
Directed by Sean Foley
20 April – 12 May, Festival Theatre
Actor Garry Essendine is at the height of his fame. He’s handsome, witty, surrounded by adoring fans, and about to take his latest theatrical hit overseas. He’s also in the middle of a raging mid-life crisis.
Holed up in his studio, he is assailed from all quarters: a beautiful debutante wants to bed him, an aspiring playwright from Uckfield wants to worship him, and his own producer’s wife wants to… well, what exactly does she want? Under the sardonic eye of his long-suffering secretary and the unshockable gaze of his estranged but determined wife, Garry struggles to keep all the balls in the air.
This sparkling comedy about sex, fame and the theatre itself – and a man wrestling with his own self-image – is widely regarded as Noël Coward’s most autobiographical play.
random / generations
A double bill of plays by debbie tucker green
Directed by Tinuke Craig
4 May – 2 June, Minerva Theatre
random
‘never trouble trouble til trouble trouble you’. But trouble does arrive. And changes everything. This blistering play, told through the eyes of a young woman, explores the unbearable sense of loss felt by a family faced with a catastrophic and random act.
generations
In the cradle of their South African family, Boyfriend and Girlfriend are beginning their lives together, just as Mama and Dad, and Grandad and Nana, did before them. Until, one by one, family members start to disappear.
Fierce, warm and funny, these two short and haunting dramas, presented here in a double bill, examine love, life and loss through the lives of two families on two continents. random is an extraordinary play for one actress, whilst the generations company includes a South African choir.
THE CHALK GARDEN by Enid Bagnold
Directed by Alan Strachan
25 May – 16 June, Festival Theatre
Nothing will grow for eccentric, high-born Mrs St Maugham in the dry earth of her once grand Sussex garden. Indoors, the situation is even worse. Her wild and damaged granddaughter, sixteen-year-old Laurel, sets fires and throws tantrums.
When the enigmatic Miss Madrigal arrives to take up the post of Laurel’s companion, the household is disconcerted by her evasive oddity. Where has she come from, and why does she refuse to speak about her past?
Both singular comedy and haunting mystery, this startling insight into mother-daughter relationships is regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable plays. The author of many books and dramas, Enid Bagnold is still best known for her 1935 novel, National Velvet.
Penelope Keith makes a welcome return to Chichester to play Mrs St Maugham. Her roles here encompass The Apple Cart, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Way of the World, Entertaining Angels and Mrs Pat.
THE COUNTRY WIFE by William Wycherley
Directed by Jonathan Munby
8 June – 7 July, Minerva Theatre
The City of London. The randy seventeenth century. Harry Horner wants to seduce as many women as possible, but he needs to convince their husbands that he’s physically incapable of any such thing. Cannily, his faux impotence also allows him to sniff out and unmask those respectably virtuous ladies who secretly ache for him.
But this virile villain hasn’t reckoned with Mr. Pinchwife’s sexy young spouse, Margery, fresh from the rather too plain-speaking countryside.
Widely regarded as one of the filthiest and funniest plays ever written, William Wycherley’s The Country Wife has outraged and excited audiences for over 300 years (though not during the many years it was banned from both stage and print) and today still casts a provocative light on sexual mores.
ME AND MY GIRL
Book & Lyrics by L Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber
Book revised by Stephen Fry with contributions by Mike Ockrent
Music by Noel Gay
Directed by Daniel Evans
2 July – 25 August, Festival Theatre
At Hareford Hall in Hampshire, suspense is in the air. The family solicitor has found the longlost heir to the Hareford title and riches. But, to everyone’s horror, he’s a Cockney barrow boy called Bill Snibson.
As the Duchess determinedly sets out to transform him into a true gentleman, Bill’s sweetheart Sally wonders how she fits in to his new life. Before too long, Bill has to answer some soul-searching questions about who he really is.
This uproarious, much-loved musical comedy includes the enormously popular numbers The Sun Has Got His Hat On, Lambeth Walk and of course Me and My Girl. The revised version by Stephen Fry and Michael Ockrent, also featuring Leaning on a Lamppost, won the 1985 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical.
This new staging is directed by Daniel Evans with designs by Lez Brotherston and choreography by Alistair David, the outstanding team behind Festival 2017’s hit musical Fiddler on the Roof.
There will be a Relaxed performance of Me and My Girl on 25 July at 2.30pm, especially suitable for individuals, groups and families with children on the autistic spectrum, sensory and communication disorders or anyone who would benefit from a more relaxed theatre environment.
THE MEETING
A new play by Charlotte Jones
Directed by Natalie Abrahami
13 July – 11 August, Minerva Theatre
Rachel has been the voice for her deaf mother since she was born but now she is restless to be heard for herself. Together, they have found sanctuary in a Quaker community that reveres silence. But the world is at war and it is becoming ever harder to live in Friendship. When a stranger arrives in their midst, their fragile peace is set to shatter.
This powerful new play from the acclaimed writer Charlotte Jones is a spellbinding exploration of the timeless challenges of bringing the truth to light.
COPENHAGEN by Michael Frayn
Directed by Michael Blakemore
17 August – 22 September, Minerva Theatre
In 1941, in the middle of the Second World War, the great German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a strange trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish colleague Niels Bohr. They were old friends and collaborators, and together in the 1920s they had begun to lay bare the mysteries at the heart of the atom. But now Denmark was under German occupation, the meeting was fraught with danger and embarrassment – and Heisenberg was burdened with a terrible secret.
Why he went to Copenhagen and what he wanted to say to Bohr are questions which have exercised historians ever since. In Michael Frayn’s multi award-winning drama Heisenberg meets Bohr and his wife Margrethe once again to look for the answers, and to work out, just as they had once worked out the internal functioning of the atom, how we can ever know why we do what we do.
FLOWERS FOR MRS HARRIS
Based on the novel by Paul Gallico
Book by Rachel Wagstaff Music & lyrics by Richard Taylor
Directed by Daniel Evans
8 – 29 September, Festival Theatre
Ada Harris spends her days dusting, darning, polishing and scrubbing. But her first glimpse of a ravishing Christian Dior dress sets her off on a journey that will change her life forever…
From the cobbled streets of post-war London to the shimmering avenues of Paris, Ada transforms the lives of everyone she meets along the way; but can she let go of the past and finally allow her own life to blossom?
This new musical, directed by Daniel Evans, captures the glowing humanity of the novella by Paul Gallico on which it is based. The production began in Sheffield, where it won three UK Theatre Awards including Best Musical.
Rachel Wagstaff adapted Sebastian Faulks’s novel Birdsong for the West End. Richard Taylor is a composer and lyricist for stage, opera and television, whose work includes Beauty and the Beast (CFYT 2017) and The Go-Between (West End).
COCK by Mike Bartlett
Directed by Kate Hewitt
28 September – 27 October, Minerva Theatre
Has John straightened out? After years glued to his boyfriend, the couple have been through a sticky patch, and now John’s attached to someone else. Someone who is different in every single way. But can John give her what she wants, when he’s never been with a woman before?
Funny and eye-openingly fresh and frank, Cock is a provocative peep into relationships in these days of oscillating identities. It tussles with knotty twenty-first century questions: can we – and should we be allowed to – change if we want to?
THE MIDNIGHT GANG by David Walliams
Adapted by Byrony Lavery
Music & Lyrics by Joe Stilgoe
Directed by Dale Rooks
13 October – 3 November, Festival Theatre
A bang on the head during a cricket match at his boarding school has landed twelve-year-old Tom in the children’s ward of the spooky Lord Funt Hospital.
Luckily, he’s not on his own with the child-hating Matron and the scary-looking Porter. George, Amber, Robin and Sally are in there too, and they’re not taking things lying down. When the lights go out and the clock strikes twelve, they’re off. But will they let new boy Tom join their forbidden midnight adventures through the hospital’s labyrinthine realm?
This inventive tale of fun, friendship and the importance of kindness is adapted from David Walliams’s biggest-selling children’s book of 2016.
THE WATSONS
A new play by Laura Wade
Adapted from the unfinished novel by Jane Austen
Directed by Samuel West
3 November – 1 December, Minerva Theatre
What happens when the writer loses the plot?
Emma Watson is nineteen and new in town. She’s been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. Emma and her sisters must marry, fast. If not, they face poverty, spinsterhood, or worse: an eternity with their boorish brother and his awful wife. Luckily there are plenty of potential suitors to dance with, from flirtatious Tom Musgrave to castle-owning Lord Osborne, who’s as awkward as he is rich.
So far so familiar. But there’s a problem: Jane Austen didn’t finish the story. Who will write Emma’s happy ending now?
Based on her incomplete novel, this sparklingly witty play looks under the bonnet of Jane Austen and asks: what can characters do when their author abandons them?
SLEEPING BEAUTY by Rufus Norris
From The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods by Charles Perrault
15 – 30 December, Festival Theatre
A princess under a fairy’s curse pricks her finger on a spindle and sleeps for a hundred years, waiting to be woken by a prince’s kiss.
But hold on a moment. There’s a distinctly different slant to this story. The princess is beautiful and spirited but there are two princes and a lot of threatening thorns. As for the fairy who caused all the trouble in the first place – well, putting things right isn’t as simple as casting another spell.
Rufus Norris’s splendidly entertaining and mischievous version of the original fairy tale ventures beyond the usual ‘happy ever after’ ending with the prince and princess united. The course of true love never did run smooth – especially if your mother-in-law is an ogress with an unfortunate taste for human flesh…
There will be a Relaxed performance of Sleeping Beauty on 30 December at 2pm.
FESTIVAL 2018 EVENTS
Talks, tours, performances and hands-on activities for all ages will offer additional insights into Festival 2018. Highlights include talks with Penelope Keith, Michael Frayn, Patricia Routledge and Mike Bartlett; a celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centenary; music from Joe Stilgoe and Late Night Cabarets with the Me and My Girl company; and debates and discussion on subjects including Noël Coward, contemporary gender on stage and unfinished manuscripts.
Free events inspired by the productions include a British Sign Language masterclass; Doing the Lambeth Walk; and a songwriting workshop with Richard Taylor. In October, the Festival Theatre will again take part in Fun Palaces, the nationwide celebration of arts and culture in the community.
Events for 16 to 25 year olds include a Prologue Cabaret. CFT’s Learning, Education and Participation (LEAP) team lead an Apprentice Arts Network day as well as workshops for families and schools.
BEYOND CHICHESTER
Three Festival 2017 productions will be running in London this year. Michael Longhurst’s production of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Caroline, Or Change transfers to Hampstead Theatre from 12 March – 21 April, with Sharon D Clarke; James Graham’s new play Quiz, directed by Daniel Evans, runs at the West End’s Noël Coward Theatre from 31 March – 16 June; and Ian McKellen reprises his acclaimed King Lear in Jonathan Munby’s production at the Duke of York’s Theatre from 11 July – 3 November. In addition, James Graham’s This House (Festival 2016) tours the UK until 2 June.
BOOKING INFORMATION
Priority booking for Friends of Chichester Festival Theatre opens:
Saturday 24 February (online and booking forms only)
Wednesday 28 February (phone and in person)
Public booking opens:
Saturday 3 March (online only)
Tuesday 6 March (phone and in person)
cft.org.uk
Box Office 01243 781312
Tickets from £10
Prologue: £5 tickets for 16 – 25s
10,000 £5 tickets are available for 16 to 25 year-olds for all productions throughout Festival 2017; sign up for free at cft.org.uk/prologue. Members also have access to a range of exclusive events.
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