ORANGE TREE THEATRE ANNOUNCES REOPENING WITH THE RECOVERY SEASON –
ALSO ANNOUNCED THE 2021 OT WRITERS COLLECTIVE
Artistic Director Paul Miller and Executive Director Hanna Streeter today announce that the Orange Tree Theatre will reopen its doors from 22 May with The Recovery Season, marking the first return of audiences to the Orange Tree in over 14 months. The season opens with Bernard Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband and Overruled directed by Miller, followed by the London première of Bryony Lavery’s Last Easter directed by Tinuke Craig. In a co-production with Actors Touring Company, Matthew Xia directs the UK première of Michele Lee’s Rice, and Miller revives his sold out 2019 production of Terence Rattigan’s While the Sun Shines.
Continuing their partnership with the JMK Award, following the success of 2019 winner Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu’s production of Little Baby Jesus, the Orange Tree will present the 2021 JMK Award-winning production. The play and the director will be announced in the spring.
Paul Miller today said, “It’s been a long time, but with live-streamed new plays this week, and nine months of work to announce, the OT is back. New work, education shows, a British première, entertaining rediscoveries, a London première, and emerging talent championed: this is a classic OT mix to be proud of. We can’t wait to start employing artists and welcoming audiences: the magic begins when everyone works together.”
The OT’s Writer’s Collective also returns with writers Jade Anouka, Nimmo Ismail, Gemma Lawrence, and Tamsin Daisy Rees, and dramaturg Cassiopeia Berkeley-Agyepong. Led by OT Literary Associate Guy Jones, the collective is an opportunity for a group of writers and a dramaturg to share skills and techniques, and to fire up conversations and collaborations.
The OT’s Education and Participation programme will start to return in person, having engaged with the Youth Theatre, Young Company and Over 60s group via Zoom throughout lockdown. Bec Martin’s Shakespeare Up Close productions of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet filmed in the theatre in March 2021, are available for schools to watch, and the OT will also return to schools with a touring Primary Shakespeare production of Twelfth Night, directed by Fiona Drummond.
Each production in the season will also be filmed by The Umbrella Rooms and streamed online with OT On Screen following the success of the company’s recent new plays project Inside/Outside. Over 3,500 tickets will be available for anyone at £15 across the season.
All productions will be rehearsed and presented in line with government guidelines, with social distancing in place for Shaw Shorts. For full information on how events will be taking place, please visit orangetreetheatre.co.uk/covid-19-safety.
SHAW SHORTS: HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND and OVERRULED
By Bernard Shaw
Directed by Paul Miller; Designed by Simon Daw; Lighting Design by Mark Doubleday
Composer Elizabeth Purnell
OT On Screen: 3-4 June 7.30pm
In How He Lied to Her Husband, Aurora is concerned about what has happened to the poems written for her by her admirer, the impetuous Henry, and fears they may get into the hands of husband Teddy. Henry suggests they confess the truth and go to the theatre as planned… to see Bernard Shaw’s Candida. Then Henry arrives home.
Overruled sees two strangers fall in love at sea. Both married they decide they must part, but then are surprised to find their spouses at a hotel together. They’ve fallen for each other too. Do they stay together or swap?
Two short plays by Bernard Shaw, directed by Artistic Director Paul Miller following his hugely successful OT productions of Shaw’s Candida, Misalliance, The Philanderer and Widowers’ Houses.
The plays can be seen separately or together as a double bill, with each play around 40 minutes.
Bernard Shaw wrote more than sixty plays in his lifetime, including Man and Superman, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House,and The Doctor’s Dilemma. Shaw was awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Paul Miller has been Artistic Director of the Orange Tree since 2014, where he has directed Jo Clifford’s Losing Venice, Charlotte Jones’ Humble Boy, Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance, The Philanderer and Widowers’ Houses, Lot Vekemans’ Poison, Marivaux’s The Lottery of Love, Somerset Maughan’s Sheppey, Terence Rattigan’s French Without Tears (also tour with English Touring Theatre), Doris Lessing’s Each His Own Wilderness and The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd by DH Lawrence. Between 2009 and 2014 he was an Associate Director at Sheffield Theatres, he directed Macbeth at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2019, and for the National Theatre he has directed The History Boys (revival for the West End and UK tour), Baby Girl by Roy Williams, DNA by Dennis Kelly, The Miracle by Lin Coghlan, The Enchantment by Victoria Benedictsson, Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads by Roy Williams, and The Associate by Simon Bent.
LONDON PREMIÈRE
LAST EASTER by Bryony Lavery
Directed by Tinuke Craig;Designed by Hannah Wolfe;Lighting Design by Elliot Griggs
Sound Design by Anna Clock
3 July – 7 August
OT On Screen: 22-23 July, 7.30pm
A lighting designer, an actress, a prop maker and a drag singer go on a pilgrimage looking for a miracle.
Even when June, the lighting designer, is diagnosed with a devastating illness, the jokes don’t stop coming as a quartet of theatre friends career across France. They glug red wine and hope to find a miracle at Lourdes for June, a non-believer who thinks the only good thing about religion is the lighting. They’ll soon discover that miracles come in many different forms.
Last Easter is a funny, moving and provocative play about the true nature of friendship.
Bryony Lavery is a multi-award-winning playwright. Her theatre credits include The Borrowers, The Lovely Bones, The Midnight Gang, Swallows and Amazons, Brighton Rock, Frozen (winner of the TMA Best Play Award), Balls, Brideshead Revisited, Queen Coal, The Believers, Treasure Island, Beautiful Burnout, The Origin of the Species, Wicked Lady, and More Light.
Tinuke Craig’s previous theatre credits include Crave, Random/Generations (Chichester Festival Theatre), Hamlet for Young Audiences (NT tour), Cinderella (Lyric Hammersmith), Vassa (Almeida Theatre), The Color Purple (Leicester Curve, Birmingham Hippodrome), I Call my Brothers (Gate Theatre), Dirty Butterfly (Young Vic). Craig was the 2015-2016 Associate Director at Gate Theatre, and received the 2014 Genesis Future Director Award. She is an Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith, and an Associate at the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain.
THE JMK AWARD-WINNING PRODUCTION
28 August – 2 October
OT On Screen: 23-24 September, 7.30pm
A contemporary play directed by the winner of the JMK Award. See the work of a great emerging director in a brand-new production selected from the following:
- Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. by Alice Birch
- Statements After An Arrest Under the Immigration Act by Athol Fugard
- Tom Fool by Franz Xaver Kroetz
- When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout by Sharman Macdonald
- Rum and Coca Cola by Mustapha Matura
- Mules by Winsome Pinnock
- Peggy Pickett Sees the Face of God by Roland Schimmelpfennig
The finalist directors will be announced shortly, with the winning director and selected play to be announced in spring.
The OT produced the JMK Award-winning production for the first time in 2019 with Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu directing a critically acclaimed production of Little Baby Jesus by Arinzé Kene.
The JMK Trust was founded in the memory James Menzies-Kitchin – a theatre director of thrilling promise – to give practical learning opportunities to theatre directors of similar ability and vision. The JMK Award allows an early career director to stage their own production of a play of their choice. www.jmktrust.org
UK PREMIÈRE
An Orange Tree Theatre and Actors Touring Company co-production
RICE
by Michele Lee
Directed by Matthew Xia
OT On Screen: 4-5 November, 7.30pm
Nisha is a young hotshot executive working for Golden Fields, Australia’s largest producer of rice. Ambitious and headstrong, she’s determined to become the first female Indian CEO in Australia. She’s close to sealing a contract with the Indian government, which would see her company take over India’s national rice distribution system. A secret deal worth billions.
Working late nights in the office she encounters Yvette, an older Chinese migrant, who cleans up her mess. Yvette has her own entrepreneurial ambitions, but her daughter faces court after participating in a protest against the unethical practices of a national supermarket chain.
The two form a powerful – if unlikely – bond as they navigate the complexities of their lives and the world at large.
Brimming with wickedly humorous observations on globalisation, politics and family, this is the UK premiere of a powerful new play from Asian-Australian writer Michele Lee, which has won numerous awards including the Australian Writers’ Guild Award for Best Original Stage Play.
Michele Lee is an Asian-Australian writer working across television, film, stage, books, audio and live art. Her other theatre credits include Security (finalist for 2021 Patrick White Award), Single Ladies, Going Down (shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Nick Enright Prize, an Australian Writer’s Guild Award and five Green Room Awards), An Assistant’s Notes for a Pandemic, The Naked Self, and Off Centre. For television, her credits include Hungry Ghosts, and Secret Threads.
This is the third collaboration between the Orange Tree Theatre and Actors Touring Company, following Amsterdam by Maya Arad Yasur and Winter Solstice by Roland Schimmelpfennig, both of which also toured the UK.
Artistic Director of Actors Touring Company Matthew Xia returns to the Orange Tree Theatre to direct Rice – he previously directed Amsterdam (ATC co-production) and Blood Knot at the OT. Other directing credits include Eden (Hampstead Theatre), One Night in Miami (Nottingham Playhouse, HOME, Bristol Old Vic), Into the Woods, Frankenstein, Wish List (Royal Exchange as Associate Artistic Director), Shebeen (Nottingham Playhouse, Stratford East), and Blue/Orange, The Sound of the Yellow, Sizwe Banzi is Dead – for which he won the 2013 Genesis Future Director Award (Young Vic). Xia is an Associate Artist at the Nottingham Playhouse.
WHILE THE SUN SHINES
by Terence Rattigan
Directed by Paul Miller; Designed by Simon Daw; Lighting Design by Mark Doubleday
Sound Designer & Composer Elizabeth Purnell
20 November – 8 January
OT On Screen: 6-7 Jan 2022 at 7.30pm
One of the most successful productions in Orange Tree history returns.
On the eve of his wedding, the young Earl of Harpenden – Bobby to his friends – has offered his room to Joe, an American soldier he drunkenly met the night before. When Bobby’s fiancée Lady Elizabeth turns up, Joe makes a move, thinking she must be Bobby’s ex, the wonderful Mabel Crum. But a Free French lieutenant also has eyes for her… And to complicate matters, Bobby’s future father-in-law turns up too. London in the Blitz, and identities get confused: time to make hay…
This first major London revival of Rattigan’s delectably charming comedy in decades had an acclaimed sold-out run in 2019. It was the writer’s greatest hit playing for over 1,000 performances in the West End when it opened in 1943.
Terence Rattigan is one of Britain’s greatest playwrights. His numerous works for the stage include French Without Tears, After the Dance, Flare Path, Love In Idleness, The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, Harlequinade, Adventure Story, Who is Sylvia?, The Deep Blue Sea, The Sleeping Prince, Separate Tables, Variation on a Theme, Ross, Man and Boy, A Bequest to the Nation, In Praise of Love and Cause Célèbre.
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