National and International Success for Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour as the successful Live Theatre and National Theatre of Scotland Co-production written by Lee Hall transfers to National Theatre, London and Melbourne Festival, Australia
Adapted by Lee Hall from the novel The Sopranos by Alan Warner.
Directed by Vicky Featherstone
Music Arranger and Supervisor, Martin Lowe
Designed by Chloe Lamford
Lighting Design by Lizzie Powell
Choreography by Imogen Knight
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, the hugely successful play, adapted by Lee Hall from Alan Warner’s cult Scottish novel The Sopranos and the first collaboration between Live Theatre and National Theatre of Scotland has its London premiere at National Theatre next week running between Monday 8 August and Saturday 1 October. It has also just been announced that Our Ladies…, will then transfer to a run at Melbourne Festival between Thursday 6 and Sunday 23 October 2016.
A conversation between writer Lee Hall and director Vicky Featherstone led them to discover a mutual love of Alan Warner’s cult Scottish novel, The Sopranos, and a desire to work together to turn it into a stage play. This led to the first and hugely successful collaboration between Live Theatre and National Theatre of Scotland.
Our Ladies… premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2015, and enjoyed a successful sell-out run at the Traverse Theatre, earning critical and audience acclaim, and picking up four awards. It embarked on a sell-out Scottish tour and a sell-out run at its English Premiere at Live Theatre in October 2015, where it also gained a Journal Culture Award for best production in 2015.
The play toured the UK in summer 2016 including a week at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal, and was featured internationally at Galway Festival, Ireland and The Festival of Art and Ideas, New Haven, USA where The New York Times review said:
‘Vibrant performances and the show’s raunchy good humo[u]r draw you in.’
Our Ladies… will receive its London premiere in summer 2016, at the Dorfman Theatre at the National Theatre of Great Britain. Live Theatre and Lee Hall have previously collaborated with National Theatre when The Pitman Painters was co-produced by the National Theatre of Great Britain in 2009.
Max Roberts, Artistic Director, Live Theatre said
“We are delighted that our co-production with The National Theatre of Scotland Our Ladies…, written by Live Theatre’s long-time collaborator Lee Hall has gone on to delight audiences both nationally and internationally. It’s a rich theatrical mix of humour and pathos with stunning live music and choreography delivered by a superb young cast is a joy to behold and we are very proud to be part of this collaboration.”
Alan Warner’s novel and Lee Hall’s musical stage play tell the story of six girls on the cusp of change. Love, lust, pregnancy and death all spiral out of control in a single day. Funny, sad, rude and beautifully sung, Our Ladies …. is a tribute to being young, lost and out of control, featuring a soundtrack of classical music and 70s pop rock, with music by Handel, Bach and ELO including the songs Mr Blue Sky, Don’t Bring Me Down, Long Black Road and more.
Vicky Featherstone, Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre, collaborates with Lee Hall, (Shakespeare in Love, Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters), to create a wild and tender play meets gig about singing, sex and sambuca.
Alan Warner wrote The Sopranos in 1998, followed by its sequel The Stars in the Bright Sky which was long listed for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. He has written eight novels and is best known for Morvern Callar which was made into a film starring Samantha Morton in 2002. His most recent novel is Their Lips Talk of Mischief, published by Faber in 2014.
Our Ladies… can be seen at the Dofrman Theatre, National Theatre, London between Monday 8 August and Saturday 1 October and Melbourne Festival, Australia between Thursday 6 and Sunday 23 October 2016.