SPRING AWAKENING

WED 2 APRIL – SAT 12 APRIL 2025

MAIN HOUSE

Book & Lyrics by Steven Sater

Music by Duncan Sheik

Based on the play by Frank Wedekind

Director: Chris Gilbey-Smith

Musical Director: James Suckling

Content warning: Spring Awakening contains strong language, references to suicide and verbal and sexual abuse, as well as depictions of physical aggression, and sexual content. Age guidance 15+, but discretion can be applied.

"This multi-award winning musical about the chaos, confusion and agony of adolescence shines a piercing beam of light into the way that the adult world simultaneously ignores and suppresses young people."

Sarah Crompton, What’s on Stage.

Spring Awakening feels raw and dangerous and honest in a way few musicals really are…. a howl of adolescent rage that sings like an angel, a teenage riot that floors you with its beauty and power

Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out.

Spring Awakening is based on an expressionist play written in 1891 by Frank Wedekind where its dramatic roots are anchored. The themes of the piece speak with loud contemporary clarity about the trials, pain, tears, and exhilaration of the teen years. Winner of 8 Tony awards and an Olivier award for Best Musical, Spring Awakening tells a story of adolescent anarchy and the rite of passage to adulthood, set to one of the most electrifying and admired scores of the 21st century. A group of teenagers – silenced and controlled by a censorious society – discover a new world of feeling and freedom outside the classroom, with both beautiful and heartbreaking consequences.

This non-professional production is presented by arrangement with Music Theatre International. All authorised performance materials are also supplied by MTI

The Just Price of Flowers by James Yarker

Originated by the highly creative theatre company Stan’s Cafe and written by its Artistic Director, James Yarker, The Just Price of Flowers is a play about the financial collapse of 2008, but set in 17th century Netherlands using the price of tulips as its inspiration.

Tulips were imported into Europe in the early 17th century when merchants were generating wealth through trade. Exotica was fashionable. A passion for acquiring tulips developed, causing a huge escalation in price and a chance for profit from speculative buying. For a short time tulips were the same price as a house, or three years of a craftsman’s wage……….until the inevitable bubble burst.

Working playfully with this as its theme, viewing the 17th century through a 21st century lens, the Van Leasings buy a tulip from Van Eek, using borrowed money from Van Hire. It follows them through the highs and lows of financial trading and explains it all with great wit whilst setting you up for the inevitable crash.

Staged in our Studio theatre; not to be missed.

Staged in arrangement with Stan’s Cafe

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE

7 – 17 MAY, 2025

By Andrew Bovell

Directed by Lynda Lewis

“This family drama is tender, physical and deeply relatable.”

Jane Howard, The Guardian

“Genuinely haunting and fervently recommended”

Paul Taylor, The Independent

With an international premiere in 2016 and a critically acclaimed production in the UK with Imogen Stubbs in the lead role, Things I Know To Be True is as beautifully touching as it is funny and bold.

It tells the story of a family and a marriage through the eyes of four adult siblings struggling to define themselves beyond their parents’ love and expectations.

Parents Bob and Fran may well imagine that with their four children grown and ready to fly the nest it might be time to relax and enjoy their adored roses. But the changing seasons bring home shattering truths.

Featuring Frantic Assembly’s celebrated style of physicality it is both poetic and brutally frank.

A moving and visceral piece of contemporary theatre.

IMPROVESARIOS

An evening of improvised opera

LOFT STUDIO

31 st May, 2025 at 7.30 p.m. in the Loft Studio

“Absolutely brilliant show. Bravo. Laughed my socks off!” -

Audience Member, 2023

Join the Improvesarios, returning following their sell out appearance in 2024, for an evening of fun and mayhem as they put down their scores and put their creative prowess to the test. Using your suggestions, this group of classically trained musicians improvise a brand new opera completely on the spot! Help them make beautiful musical moments or laugh along as they try to hold it all together. Their fate is in your hands...

With previous adventures including prison breaks, lost love in the hotel business and even the sacking of Rome, no scenario is too outlandish or too mundane for this group to turn into an opera.

UP ‘N’ UNDER

WED 11 JUNE – SAT 21 JUNE

John Godber

Directed by Lorna Middleton

“Heartfelt, brilliantly knowing in its parodies and often squealingly

funny……it celebrates a poignant if glorious past and leaves the future

an open question.”

Paul Allen, The Guardian

Up 'n' Under is a riotous Olivier Award-winning comedy about a depleted and ragged amateur rugby league team, who are audaciously taking on their arch rivals. The play follows Arthur, a former professional, who's tasked with training the Wheatsheaf Arms, a team that's never won a game and spends more time in the pub than on the pitch. Arthur enlists the help of Hazel, a female fitness guru, to turn the team around. 

John Godber is a prolific playwright known for his hits Teechers, Bouncers, and April in Paris. He was the Artistic Director of Hull Truck theatre company for 26 years and early in his appointment, realising that in Hull a ticket to the rugby was probably more popular than to the theatre, he wrote Up ‘n Under to tempt the sports loving locals.

It was a huge hit when it premiered and continues to delight audiences everywhere.

DOCTOR FAUSTUS

By Christopher Marlowe in a new adaptation by David Fletcher.

Wednesday 16 July - Saturday 26 July

Directed by David Fletcher

Christopher Marlowe's notorious tale of vanity, greed and damnation will be staged- with the creative team unconfined! - in a new adaptation by David Fletcher.

Faustus is a brilliant but embittered academic, a solitary scholar who has exhausted the confines of human knowledge. Frustrated with the futility of religion, law and science he is desperate for a deeper understanding of the universe – and for the worldwide fame that he believes it will bring.

Risking everything, he conjures the demon Mephistopheles and asks him to strike a deal with Lucifer, the Devil. The deal? Twenty four years of absolute knowledge and infinite power in exchange for his soul. Despite being tormented by doubt, Faustus agrees to the deal and signs in blood. But as he begins to revel in his new powers, the world around him starts to collapse and the clock inexorably counts down to the final moment of reckoning………