Theatre announces new bumper Spring season of entertainment

Birmingham Rep theatre will be hosting the best of dance, drama and entertainment currently touring the UK this spring.

A packed line-up features world-premiere dance pieces from multi award-winning companies Boy Blue and Ballet Black, evenings in conversation with legends of broadcasting, Joan Bakewell and Nigel Havers, and new stage adaptations of film and television favourites.

Leaping onto The Rep’s largest stage, The House, on Friday 7 and Saturday 8 March will be the UK’s most celebrated hip-hop dance theatre company, Boy Blue with its latest production – Cycles. Composer Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante MBE and choreographer Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy MBE describe Cycles as ‘a tenacious exploration of hip-hop dance in all its forms’.

Ballet Black makes a welcome return with a new double bill, Ballet Black: Shadows including a darkly comic adaptation of Oyinkan Braithwaite‘s international bestselling novel, My Sister, The Serial Killer and the British choreographic debut of choreographer Chanel DaSilva, with a dance piece utilising shadow work as an exploration of humanity.

Joan Bakewell will be in-conversation with fellow journalist Matthew Stadlen (BBC Radio 5 Live, Channel 5, Sky News) for one night only on Wednesday 5 March in The House.

Later in the month (Tuesday 25 March), Nigel Havers will share the behind-the-scenes gossip, tales of triumph (and disaster), moments of sheer madness, and a fair bit of Talking B*ll*cks in his first ever solo show.

Beginning the season, is Myra’s Story on Saturday 1 March. Written by Irish playwright Brian Foster, this one woman play starring Fíonna Hewitt-Twamley as all the larger-than-life Dublin characters tells the story of middle-aged homeless alcoholic, Myra McLaughlin living rough on the streets of Dublin. 

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman plays from Tuesday 11 – Saturday 15 March. In this new production of ‘one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century’ actor David Hayman (Sid and Nancy, Dad’s Army) plays the lead role of Willy Loman is this timeless tale about the sacrifices made in pursuit of the ‘American Dream’.

Following this is James Graham’s (ranked number one in The Stage’s 100 most influential players) new adaptation of Alan Bleasdale’s BAFTA drama series, Boys from the Blackstuff  coming to The Rep directly from the National Theatre and the West End (Tuesday 18 – Saturday 22 March).

The Rep will also be bringing the must-see tour-de-force of comedy and physical theatre, Hold On To Your Butts - a live shot-for-shot parody of the greatest dinosaur film of all time is performed by just two actors and a live Foley artist in The Rep’s second largest performance space The Studio, from Friday 21 – Saturday 22 March. 

Closing out the month in The House, is the unforgettable music of Jamaica Love (Saturday 29 – Sunday 30 March). Featuring the vocals of John McLean, the soulful harmonies of Celia Wickham-Anderson (of Black Voices fame) and a live band.

The Rep will also be celebrating the very best of emerging work from a series of new writers in their most intimate performance space, The Door.

Productions include:

• Tiny Fragments of Beautiful Light (Tuesday 4 to Thursday 6 March) - a moving piece exploring the writer’s own diagnosis of autism through a female lens.
• (the) Woman (Friday 7 & Saturday 8 March) - a funny and brutally honest depiction of motherhood by award-winning upcoming writer Jane Upton;
• The Intrusion (Wednesday 19 and Thursday 20 March) - a darkly comedic collaboration between Bric à Brac Theatre and Told by an Idiot about the end of the world and the threat of extinction around the corner;
• Everybody Wants to Be Ronaldo (Friday 21 & Saturday 22 March) - A high-octane Grime-sical set in Birmingham by Birmingham-based production company TECTUM theatre about the pressures of football academies on young men.
• Everywhere (Thursday 27 March) - a triple bill of 30-minute short plays bringing some of the very best established and emerging talent from theatre to tell original and diverse stories that take us from displacement to maternity wards.