OLIVIER THEATRE
A co-production with Manchester International Festival
wonder.land
created by Damon Albarn, Moira Buffini and Rufus Norris
music by Damon Albarn
book and lyrics by Moira Buffini
directed by Rufus Norris
wonder.land is a coming-of-age adventure that explores the blurred boundaries between our online and offline lives. Aly is struggling with all the pressures of being a teenager: family, school, friends and her own insecurities. Then she discovers wonder.land – a mysterious online world where, perhaps, she can create a whole new life. The web becomes her looking-glass – but will Aly see who she really is?
Suitable for 10 years +
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Saturday 12 March, 2pm + 12.15pm TT
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCE
Saturday 27 February, 2pm
As You Like It
by William Shakespeare
directed by Polly Findlay
Shakespeare’s glorious comedy comes to the National for the first time in over 30 years.
Rosalie Craig plays Rosalind.
With her father the Duke banished and in exile, Rosalind and her cousin Celia leave their lives in the court behind them and journey into the Forest of Arden.There, released from convention, Rosalind experiences the liberating rush of transformation. Disguising herself as a boy, she embraces a different way of living and falls spectacularly in love.
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCE
Wednesday 2 March, 7.30pm
Les Blancs
by Lorraine Hansberry
directed by Yaël Farber
An African country teeters on the edge of civil war. A society prepares to drive out its colonial present and claim an independent future. Racial tensions boil over. Tshembe, returned home from England for his father’s funeral, finds himself in the eye of the storm. A family and a nation fall apart under the pressure to determine their own identity as this brave, illuminating and powerful play confronts the hope and tragedy of revolution.
Written eleven years after A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s final drama is an unknown masterpiece of the American stage and a highly theatrical search for the soul of post-colonial Africa.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Friday 6 May, 7.30pm
Saturday 7 May, 2pm + 12.30pm Touch Tour
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES
Wednesday 4 May, 7.30pm
Wednesday 1 June, 7.30pm
The Threepenny Opera
by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill
in a new translation by Simon Stephens
directed by Rufus Norris
A landmark 20th century musical theatre THE THREEPENNY OPERA comes to the NT for the first time. The cast includes Jamie Beddard, Rosalie Craig, Nick Holder and Rory Kinnear.
London scrubs up for the coronation. The thieves are on the make, the whores on the pull, the police cutting deals to keep it all out of sight. Mr and Mrs Peachum are looking forward to a bumper day in the beggary business but their daughter didn’t come home last night.
Mack the Knife is back in town.
Will contain filthy language and immoral behaviour.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Friday 26 August, 7.30pm
Saturday 27 August, 2pm + 12.30pm Touch Tour
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES
Thursday 30 June, 7.30pm
Saturday 2 July, 2pm
Wednesday 10 August, 7.30pm
The Chichester Festival Theatre productions
Young Chekhov
by Anton Chekhov
in a new version by David Hare
The YOUNG CHEKHOV trilogy opened to overwhelming acclaim at Chichester Festival
Theatre last year. The company now come to the National, offering a unique chance to explore the birth of a revolutionary dramatic voice. The trilogy is comprised of Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull.
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCE
Saturday 3 September- all day:
11.45am Platonov, 4.00pm Ivanov and 8.00pm The Seagull
LYTTELTON THEATRE
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
by August Wilson
directed by Dominic Cooke
Chicago, 1927. In a recording studio on the city’s South Side, a battle of wills is raging.
Ma Rainey, Mother of the Blues, uses every trick in the book to fight her record producers for control of her music. Hardened by years of ill-treatment and bad deals, she’s determined that ‘Black Bottom’, the song that bears her name, will be recorded her way. But Levee, the band’s swaggering young trumpet player, plans to catapult the band into the jazz age. His ambition puts them all in danger. Inspired by the real-life Blues legend and infused with her music, August Wilson’s play speaks powerfully of a struggle for self-determination against overwhelming odds.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Friday 29 April, 7.30pm
Saturday 30 April, 2.15pm + 12.45pm TT
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES
Saturday 26 March, 2.15pm
Monday 18 April, 7.30pm
Waste
by Harley Granville Barker
directed by Roger Michell
Famously banned by the censors in 1907, Harley Granville Barker’s controversial masterpiece gathers a large ensemble to expose a cut-throat, cynical world of sex, sleaze and suicide amongst the political elite of Edwardian England. Charles Edwards plays Henry Trebell.
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCE
Thursday 10 March, 7.30pm
The Suicide
by Suhayla El-Bushra, after Erdman
directed by Nadia Fall
Things are getting tough for Sam. No job, benefits stopped and stuck in a tiny flat with his girlfriend Maya and her mum. The pressure is building. It feels like there might be only one way out. But every ending is a beginning and there are plenty of people keen to capitalise on Sam’s momentous decision. From corrupt local politicians to kids trying to raise the number of views of their online videos, everyone wants a piece of Sam’s demise. It scarcely matters what Sam actually wants. Faced with the promise of immortality, what’s his life worth? Suhayla El-Bushra takes the satiric masterpiece by Nikolai Erdman (1900-1970) and smashes it into contemporary urban Britain.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Saturday 21 May, 2.15pm + 12.45pm Touch Tour
Monday 23 May, 7.30pm
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES
Saturday 14 May, 2.15pm
Friday 24 June, 7.30pm
The Deep Blue Sea
by Terence Rattigan
directed by Carrie Cracknell
A flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London. 1952. When Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours in the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt, the story of her tempestuous affair with a former RAF pilot and the breakdown of her marriage to a High Court Judge begins to emerge. With it comes a portrait of need, loneliness and long-repressed passion. Behind the fragile veneer of post-war civility burns a brutal sense of loss and longing.
Helen McCrory and director Carrie Cracknell reunite following the acclaimed 2014 Medea.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Saturday 30 July, 2.15pm + 12.45pm TT
Monday 1 August, 7.30pm
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES
Saturday 9 July, 2.15pm
Friday 12 August, 7.30pm
The Plough and the Stars
By Sean O’Casey
Directed by Howard Davies
From November 1915 to Easter 1916, as the rebellion builds to a climax half a mile away, the disparate residents of a Dublin tenement go about their lives, peripheral to Ireland’s history.
Sean O’Casey places a fixed lens to watch, mercilessly objective, as a dozen vivid characters come and go – selfless, hilarious and desperate by turns – while the heroic myth of Ireland is fought over elsewhere
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCE
Friday 19 August, 7.30pm
DOFMAN THEATRE
The Flick
by Annie Baker
directed by Sam Gold
Annie Baker’s play THE FLICK arrives at the National Theatre direct from New York, where it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
In a run-down movie theatre in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35-millimetre film projectors in the state. Their tiny battles and not-so-tiny heartbreaks play out in the empty aisles, becoming more gripping than the lacklustre, second-run movies on screen.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Saturday 4 June, 1.30pm + 12 noon TT
Monday 6 June, 7pm
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES
Thursday 12 May, 7pm
Wednesday 18 May, 7pm
Sunset at the Villa Thalia
a new play by Alexi Kaye Campbell
directed by Simon Godwin
April 1967: Greece is in political turmoil. Charlotte and Theo have retreated to a small island in search of peace and inspiration. But when they meet a charismatic American couple at the port they are seduced into making choices with devastating consequences. This funny and passionate new play by Alexi Kaye Campbell (Woman in Gold, The Pride, Apologia) spans a decade as it explores the impact of foreign influence, planned and unintentional, on a nation and its people.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Friday 15 July, 7.30pm
Saturday 16 July. 2.30pm + 1pm TT
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES
Monday 18 July, 7.30pm
Thursday 28 July, 7.30pm
Cleansed
by Sarah Kane
directed by Katie Mitchell
Tinker practises the art of atrocity, but even he isn’t immune from the need for love. Existing on the border between beauty and brutality, Cleansed imagines a world in which language, human relationships and the body itself are pared away to bare bone. Cleansed contains graphic scenes of physical and sexual violence.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Saturday 19 March, 2.30pm + 1pm TT
Monday 21 March, 7.30pm
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES
Monday 4 April, 7.30pm
Saturday 23 April, 2.30pm
TEMPORARY THEATRE
A Graeae Theatre Company and Theatre Royal Plymouth co-production
The Solid Life of Sugar Water
by Jack Thorne
26 February – 19 March
Phil and Alice are in love. Phil and Alice are healing wounds. Phil and Alice are desperate to communicate. Candid, uninhibited and visceral, this new play from the award winning Jack Thorne is an intimate, tender portrait of loss, hurt and recovery.
A fully accessible production, creatively integrating captions and with audio description at all performances.
Platform Event: On The Solid Life of Sugar Water
Graeae Associate Director Amit Sharma and playwright Jack Thorne talk about the production.
Free but booking is required.
This Platform will feature live Speech-to-Text transcription by STAGETEXT.
Islington Community Theatre present
Brainstorm
by Ned Glasier, Emily Lim and the company
A fearless company of teenagers investigate the workings of the adolescent brain in a new piece from one of the UK’s leading companies making theatre with young people.
Created with cognitive neuroscientist Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and drawing upon the life experiences of the cast, BRAINSTORM is a thrilling exploration of the most frustrating, chaotic and exhilarating changes that will ever happen to us.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Saturday 2 April, 3pm + 1.30pm TT
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES
Friday 1 April, 7pm
Another World: Losing Our Children to Islamic State
written by Gillian Slovo, developed with Nicolas Kent from his original idea
Over the last twelve months, headlines have been dominated by the growth of Islamic State, and terror attacks claimed by IS have spread across the world. What is the entity that calls itself Islamic State? Why are some young Muslim men and women from across Western Europe leaving their homes to answer the call of Jihad? And what should we do about it?
This piece of verbatim documentary theatre, written by novelist Gillian Slovo using material from the interviews she conducted, and directed by Nicolas Kent, is the result of many months researching Islamic State, meeting people affected by the organisation and involved in the fight against it.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Saturday 23 April, 2.30pm with 1pm TT
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCE
Tuesday 3 May, 7.45pm
NEW LONDON THEATRE, DRURY LANE
War Horse
based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo
adapted by Nick Stafford
in association with the award-winning Handspring Puppet Company
The powerful drama plays in the West End until 12 March. Tickets are now on sale for the 2017 – 2018 UK tour, with assisted performances at many venues. More information can be found atwarhorseonstage.com. Suitable for 10 years +
GIELGUD THEATRE, LONDON’S WEST END
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Simon Stephens
based on the best-selling novel by Mark Haddon
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT TIME, winner of 7 Olivier Awards, including Best New Play, extends its run at the Gielgud Theatre.
AUDIO DESCRIBED
Saturday 16 April, 2.30pm with 12.30 TT
CAPTIONED PERFORMANCE
Saturday 9 April, 2.30pm
BSL PERFORMANCE
Sat 7 May, 2.30pm
