Type: Performance
The seventh Summer Residency at the Theatre Royal brings some of the most important playwrights of the last hundred years to Bath.
The season begins with Chekov and Terence Rattigan and continue with Bernard Shaw, David Storey, Michael Frayn, and conclude – in the Ustinov – with the world premiere of Another Door Closed , a new play by Peter Gill, a colleague of mine from the National Theatre. The mixture of old and new promises to be exciting.
Rattigan’s masterpiece The Browning Version is in a double bill with a real rarity – Chekhov’s Swansong – a touching portrait of a leading actor after the curtain falls. Shaw’s The Apple Cart , written for the Malvern Festival in the late 1920s, is an extremely perceptive comedy about politicians and their relationship with the monarchy. Shaw said of it: “It is as unlike St Joan as it is possible to be”. So don’t be put off – it’s very funny and amazingly apt.
Two modern writers round off the programme: David Storey’s richly textured play about old age, Home and Michael Frayn’s extraordinary comedy Balmoral – set in a post revolutionary Britain.
As always it will be a pleasure to welcome you, the Bath audience, to our productions. You are always very responsive to challenging theatre.
Sir Peter Hall
