New Year. New Shows. New Look.
Artistic Director, Sean Foley has today added to Birmingham Rep’s 2022 programme of work, marking Birmingham Rep’s 50th anniversary season.
The Rep’s offering as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival, a 6-month celebration of culture that surrounds the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, will include the newly announced, critically acclaimed production from Australia, Counting and Cracking (19-27 Aug). The production arrives at The Rep as one of the only two venues in the UK to host this epic story.
The Rep’s offering as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival will also include the world premiere of the stage adaptation of Floella Benjamin’s award-winning and iconic book, Coming to England (31 Mar-16 Apr) and another world premiere with Playboy of the West Indies – The Musical (10 Jun-2 Jul), a glorious new musical with a toe-tapping, finger-snapping score firmly rooted in the Caribbean. The Birmingham 2022 Festival is generously supported by Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Outside of the Birmingham 2022 Festival, Ramps On The Moon, the pioneering initiative committed to putting D/deaf and disabled artists and audiences at the centre of their work will present a new production of Shakespeare’s raucous comedy, Much Ado About Nothing (4-8 Oct) directed by Robert Hastie. The performance features the use of integrated creative sign language, audio description and captioning.
Associate company, Told by an Idiot, will present the world premiere of Would You Bet Against Us? (19 May-4 Jun) a hilarious and poignant celebration of the most important night in Aston Villa’s history, becoming European Cup champions in 1982. Would You Bet Against Us? marks the 40th anniversary of this huge event in the history of Birmingham football.
The acclaimed RSC production of Moliere’s classic Tartuffe (14 Oct-5 Nov) directed by Iqbal Khan and adapted by Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto transports the classic story to Birmingham’s Stratford Road.
Finally, The Rep will hold a symposium attended by comedians, directors, writers and academics entitled Serious About Comedy (1 Apr), a conversation and inquiry into the development of comedy in all its forms in conjunction with the University of Birmingham.
Artistic Director, Sean Foley said: “To have been able to programme and deliver a whole year of shows for The Rep in its 50th year in its ‘new’ theatre on Centenary Square has been a privilege; that it has also coincided with such an important year for the City is an incredible honour.
Birmingham is on the move: the world’s most important super-diverse City has the Commonwealth Games in its sights, and The Rep does too… From the epic story of South Asian migration, Counting and Cracking, to the inspiring ‘Windrush story’ of Floella Benjamin’s Coming to England; from the extraordinary Young Rep festival of shows that is Uncommon Riches, to the musical comedy of Playboy of the West Indies – itself a wonderful example of how creativity shares and borrows across all borders, as Mustapha Matura’s version of Synge’s Irish classic is re-created as a new musical by a new generation of artists – these shows celebrate and interrogate how the legacy of Commonwealth has enriched our shared culture.
Lastly, and firstly: comedy… to finally be able to bring Tartuffe, Moliere’s superb comedy about a conman, to The Rep stage, in Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto’s sparklingly funny new version set in Birmingham, (a hit at the RSC in 2018) is a joy. It was to be the first main stage show under my Artistic Directorship in March ’20, but never saw the light of day… Now, directed by our Associate Director Iqbal Khan – also Artistic Director of the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony – it seems the perfect conclusion to The Rep’s 50th Anniversary Season.”
Tickets for Counting and Cracking, Much Ado About Nothing, Would You Bet Against Us? and Tartuffe are on priority sale now and go on general sale Fri 04 Mar.
Tickets for Coming to England and Playboy of The West Indies – The Musical are on sale now.
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