DETAILS OF ITS SPRING
SEASON
THE FIRST UNDER
NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PHIL BARTLETT, RUNNING FEBRUARY TILL JUNE 2022
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
HERE
Phil Bartlett, the new Artistic
Director of The Hope Theatre, is pleased to announce details of the spring
2022 season at the acclaimed 50-seat pub theatre in the heart of Islington.
The season opens with the world-premiere of Measured,
Emma O’Brien’s witty and moving play about the hidden consequences of living
with an eating disorder, which is accompanied by Measured Festival,
a selection of electric late-evening events celebrating mental health
awareness, including stand-up, improv and comedy. Other world-premieres include
A Good Time Was Had By All, a dark satire about a group of
friends who discover disturbing information about one of their group, and Up
in Town, a new stage adaptation which marks the twentieth anniversary
of the cult TV series about an older woman’s desire to be visible.
Much of the programme looks outside of London, with Emma Zadow’s new
play Fridge focussed on two sisters reuniting in Norfolk, and If.
Destroyed. Still. True., the debut script from Jack Condon, exploring
male friendship in rural Essex. The season closes with 100 Paintings, a dystopian
comedy about a young artist and his mother which comes to the Hope after a
successful shorter run at the Bread and Roses Theatre last year.
There is also the return of the popular Sunday-Monday programme,
which offers emerging theatre-makers the opportunity to present their work without
having to commit to a full three-week run.
Ticket prices will rise from £15 (£12 concessions) to £16 (£13
concessions) for performances taking place from April 2022 onwards. This
reflects the rise in national living wage and the theatre’s ongoing commitment
to ensuring all performers, stage management and box office staff are paid a
legal wage.
Tickets are on sale now via the Hope Theatre website.
Artistic Director Phil Bartlett said, “Despite the many challenges the theatre
industry continues to face, it’s been a real pleasure putting together the
spring season. With a focus on new writing and stories which look beyond London,
these productions are dramatic, surprising, and have something to say about the
world we live in now.”
MEASURED /
MEASURED FESTIVAL
Written
by Emma O’Brien, directed by Cat Robey, starring Juliette Burton
Tuesday
22 February – Saturday 11 March @ 7.00pm
PRESS
NIGHT: Thursday 24 February @ 7.00pm
“Well, it’s not a party
’til someone’s crying in the
toilets.”
Sophie’s sister, Lucy, is at that age where her
friends are throwing yoghurt around at school. Sophie’s boyfriend, Tom, runs a
catering company for picky wedding planners. And Sophie? Sophie has an eating
disorder - which she sees as a rather large inconvenience. Now that she’s in
recovery, Sophie is hopeful she can reconnect with Lucy and Tom, but she knows
that after hiding within her illness for so long, it’s not going to be easy to
cope without it.
MEASURED is a witty and moving new play examining the hidden
consequences of an eating disorder for the sufferer and those who love them.
Exposing the emotional turmoil of the illness without glamorising its dangers, MEASURED
questions how effective recovery can be in a society that still wants women to
be as ‘little’ as possible.
Emma has worked in mental health social work for over
ten years and wrote MEASURED whilst in recovery from anorexia.
Award-winning director Cat was Deputy Director of Jermyn Street Theatre
2019-21. Comedian and mental health ambassador Juliette Burton has sold out
Edinburgh Fringe 2015-18 and won numerous awards, most recently recommended by
The Guardian for lockdown comedy in 2020.
To accompany Emma O’Brien’s moving new play comes the MEASURED
FESTIVAL - a powerful range of award-winning comedy, improv, spoken word
and performance art celebrating mental health awareness and bringing out the
laughter within.
The festival comprises a roster of electric late-shows
presented after each performance of MEASURED. Stand-up performances by
award-winning comedians and actors hope to foster a lively and enthusiastic
environment in which frank discussion about the difficulties of living with a
mental illness can be had.
Full line-up will be announced soon.
Written by Emma Zadow, performed by Emma
Zadow, Gabrielle De Saumarez, and Edward Watchman, directed by Anoushka Bonwick
Tuesday
15 March – Saturday 2 April
PRESS
NIGHT: Thursday 17 March @ 9pm @ 7.45pm
Alice hasn't been home for a while. Seven years in
fact. But when her little sister, Lo, attempts to take her own life, the
journey from South London to Norfolk proves to be more than just a simple
change of pace. Disney VHS tapes, walkmans and shared memories fill the family
home where Alice must confront what she left behind and what exactly brought
her back.
With the help of their friend Charlie, together, the three try to rekindle a
family broken in the Norfolk wilderness.
“When it's this silent, it's easy to hear voices.”
FRIDGE is a play about familial ties and the importance of
giving support to those we love. In the wake of mental health cuts to the NHS,
over 81,000 people in the Norfolk area are experiencing mental health
difficulties, with suicide rates presenting as particularly high. This is a
show with magic realist writing at the heart of a story about a broken family
that are brought back together in Norfolk, despite themselves and their past
trauma.
Written and directed by Sam
Smithson, performed by Hattie Kemish, Holly McComish, Bethany Monk Lane, and
Cameron Wilson
Tuesday 5 – Saturday 23 April
@ 7.45pm
PRESS NIGHT: Thursday 7 April
@ 7.45pm
A dinner party.
A dark secret.
A damn good time.
When university friends
re-unite over dinner, they are forced to make an uncomfortable decision about
one of their oldest friends..
“People aren't always what
they show you, do you understand? People hide things.”
A darkly satirical play
exploring justice and who has access to it.
The debut production from
JAWBONES Theatre, telling the epic stories in everyday lives. Written by Jack
Condon, directed by Sarah Stacey
Tuesday 26 April – Saturday 2
May @ 7.45pm
PRESS NIGHT: Thursday 28
April @ 7.45pm
“But where the fuck have you actually been though?
What have you really done? It’s been… I hardly recognise you mate.”
A cliffside hangout. A friendship. A forgotten town.
Summer 2012, a warm evening by the sea. James is home
from University with his new girlfriend Charlotte. John, James’ best friend,
can’t wait to reunite.
Until they do.
Something is changing, something seismic.
And none of them knows how significant this day will
be for the rest of their lives…
A story spanning ten years, IF. DESTROYED. STILL.
TRUE. shines a stark light on life between the cracks, and asks what
happens when the place you were born can no longer be called home. Identity,
class and cultures clash as life pulls childhood best mates apart. We bear
witness to what we stand to lose when we cannot truly communicate, and the
lengths to which we must go to find peace…
A new tragic comedy by Jack
Stacey (The Play That Goes Wrong,
West End), directed by Zachary Hart (Julius
Caesar, The Bridge).
Tuesday 17 May – Saturday 4
June @ 7.45pm
PRESS NIGHT: Thursday 19 May
@ 7.45pm
Set in a dystopian future, 100
PAINTINGS tells the story of a young artist and his mother struggling to
survive in the crumbling Savoy Hotel.
“How am I supposed to be a
professional artist with my mother barging in offering hot beverages and food
every five minutes?”
Battling mountains of unpaid hotel bills, the young artist has three days to
produce one-hundred original paintings and deliver them to the new hotel
manager or he and his mother face being turned out onto the street.
With hilarious distractions coming in full force, he struggles to keep on
course to meet the deadline, but help often comes from the most unexpected of
places…
The Sunday/Monday
shows in the season announced so far are as follows: MRS GREEN (27
& 28 February), EVERYTHING IS GRAND AND I'M COMPLETELY OK, (6
& 7 March), CARELESS
(27
& 28 March), UP IN TOWN (10,
11, 17 & 18 April), HAPPENINGS (22 &
23 May)
Opening
in 2013, The Hope Theatre was originally a sister theatre of Islington’s King’s
Head Theatre, renovated from a function room above the famous Hope & Anchor
pub and music venue into a black box studio theatre. The Hope Theatre has
transferred two productions to the West End (Ushers to the Charing Cross
Theatre and the Snoo Wilson's Lovesong Of The Electric Bear to The Arts)
and has been home to many world premieres. It also housed the professional
world premiere of Joe Orton’s Fred And Madge.
The
Hope Theatre is a place for audiences and companies to explore BIG ideas. It
nurtures and develops new producing models, working with exciting companies to
present a mix of new writing, lost gems from well-known writers, re-polished
classics and innovatively staged musicals.
Although
The Hope Theatre has received no regular public subsidy since its 2013 opening,
it was the first Off West End venue to open with a house agreement with Equity.
This ensures a legal wage for all actors, stage managers and box office staff
working at the theatre.
In
2020, Kennedy Bloomer became Artistic Director of the theatre and navigated the
theatre through the global Covid-19 pandemic and total closure by taking The
Hope Theatre online. Phil Bartlett was appointed Artistic Director in September
2021.
Artistic
Director: Phil Bartlett
Associate
Director: Toby Hampton
Technical
Manager: Laurel Marks
Patron:
Paul Clayton
Support
The Hope Theatre: https://www.thehopetheatre.com/support-us/
Or
visit www.thehopetheatre.com for more information.
The Hope
Theatre
207 Upper
Street, London, N1 1RL
Twitter: @thehopetheatre
Facebook: /thehopetheatre
Instagram: /thehopetheatre
