The season opens with Ladies’ Day written by Amanda Whittington – described by the Guardian as Britain’s most consistently popular female dramatist. The Coliseum has programmed many of her plays over the years including Be My Baby, Satin ‘n’ Steel and Saturday Night Sunday Morning. In Ladies’ Day we spend the day at the races with a group of four intrepid lasses fresh from a fish factory in Hull. It’s a great situation comedy – Amanda writes some fantastic female roles. Some of you may remember the Hull Truck tour of Ladies Down Under which came to the Coliseum in 2007. This is a loose sequel to Ladies’ Day where the ladies all jet off on a trip of a lifetime to Australia for another adventure.
I’m really looking forward to directing a Noël Coward production – Hay Fever – which follows on from the successful Private Lives we staged a few years ago. Coward’s writing is always great fun to work with; dry, witty and a comedy of manners. I haven’t directed one of his plays for many years so I’m really looking forward to getting to grips with the Bliss family (the characters in the play) and setting them all off for a weekend of chaos.
Our two touring shows couldn’t be more different. Rifco are returning after the fantastic Britain’s Got Bhangra with Break The Floorboards which is sure to get people moving in their seats. On the other side of the spectrum is Original Theatre’s production of Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks’s heart wrenching story of love and sacrifice during the Great War.
There’s a great deal of events happening off the main stage including too festivals. First Break is a week long festival of new writing and work by emerging companies from across the North West taking place at venues throughout Oldham as well at the Coliseum’s studio theatre.
The season will also include Shake It Up! where young people will programme an entire week of productions for which they’ll promote, sell and administer all themselves. It will certainly be something special as we’ve never done anything like this before.
There’s lots more in the new season but I’ve run out of space. Make sure you have look as the whole season either online or by picking up a season brochure.
See you at the theatre,
Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director
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