The Tower Theatre’s Summer Season
We are delighted to announce a further series of plays planned for next year …
Wednesday 30 April – Saturday 10 May
Flare Path, by Terence Rattigan. Directed by Dominic Ward.
Timed to coincide with VE day on the 8 May this is a 4-star play. It had a west end revival in 2011 at the Haymarket with a young Sienna Miller in it. Written in 1941 and first staged in 1942, it is set in a hotel near a RAF Bomber Command airbase during the Second World War, the story involves a love triangle between a pilot, his actress wife and a famous film star. The play is based in part on Rattigan’s own wartime experiences,
Wednesday 14 – Saturday 24 May
The Children, by Lucy Kirkwood. Directed by Jonathan Reed.
More 4 stars, The Children premiered at the Royal Court in 2016. The play concerns two retired nuclear physicists, a married couple Hazel and Robin, who live in a remote cottage on the British coast. The world outside is dealing with a major disaster at a nuclear power station. They are visited by Rose, who is also a nuclear physicist. The event that served as the inspiration for the play was the 2011 Fukushima nuclear explosion in Japan.
Wednesday 4 – Saturday 14 June
Staying Alive by Kat Roberts. Directed by Olivia Chakraborty.
Darkly funny, and achingly tender, Kat Roberts’ play Staying Alive is about the death of a child; an exploration of love, honesty, family and grief; about how in the wake of any irreparable loss, we find ways to connect and survive. It was on at the Pleasance Theatre in 2015 with another 4-star review.
Wednesday 18 – Saturday 28 June
Rockets and Blue Lights by Winsome Pinnock. Directed by Landé Belo.
First staged in 2020 at the Manchester Royal Exchange and then at the National in 2021 with 4 stars in the Guardian and The Stage, this astonishing and fiercely political play by Winsome Pinnock was named winner of the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award. Pinnock’s theme is an exploration of how Black history, and Black lives, are represented, or rather misrepresented, in various art forms. On the set of a new film about Victorian artist JMW Turner, young actress Lou is haunted by unresolved history and Turner’s painting Slave Ship. Meanwhile, in 1840 Londoners Lucy and Thomas who are newly freed slaves and are trying to come to terms with the meaning of freedom.
Wednesday 2 – Sunday 6 July
Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Adapted by Paul Graves and Angharad Ormond with music by Colin Guthrie. Directed by Angharad Ormond.
This is a devised piece written by Angharad Ormond and Paul Graves. Ishmael joins the ragtag whaling crew aboard the Pequod, he witnesses both the perils of nature and obsession, as Captain Ahab leads them in unbending pursuit of the dangerous white whale Moby Dick.
This production will also be touring to the
Brighton Open-Air Theatre (BOAT), with performances from Thursday 24 – Saturday 26 July
and to the
Minack Theatre, Cornwall, with performances form Monday 25 – Thursday 28 August.
Tickets for all these shows will on sale from early next year