The New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich’s season for spring 2014, which goes on general sale on Saturday 16 November, features four musicals.
The Threepenny Opera is a New Wolsey’s co-production of Brecht and Weill’s musical masterpiece with Nottingham Playhouse, Birmingham Rep, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Graeae Theatre Company (12–22 March). Familiar faces from Our House and Reasons To Be Cheerful will be welcomed back, and Will Kenning, fresh from four years service as the pantomime dame, will be playing the role of Tiger Brown. The New Wolsey’s artistic director Peter Rowe and Graeae’s Jenny Sealey will join forces once again to offer an anarchic version of this adaption of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
Peter Rowe, artistic director and co-director of The Threepenny Opera comments: “I wanted to do a version of The Threepenny Opera where we create a company of contemporary ‘beggars’ to tell the tale from their perspective – a parable about the corruption of the world, told by those excluded from it. Jenny Sealey’s production of Reasons To Be Cheerful, seemed to have exactly the spirit that The Threepenny Opera requires – defiant and irreverent, funny and fearless and set me thinking… What would it be like if we brought together the Graeae motley crew with the Wolsey actor/musicians? Brecht’s own mash up of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera has a brilliant, instinctive, cabaret flair. The team we are putting together to re-invent this musical for our times aims to recapture that heady mix of gallows humour, razor-sharp satire and up-front entertainment. I can’t wait.”
Also in the season will be Matthew Bugg’s burlesque musical Miss Nightingale (27 March–5 April) ahead of a second national tour, the touring version of Betty Blue Eyes (15–19 April) and Tom (23 April to Saturday 5 May), Theatr na nOg’s celebration of the life and music of Tom Jones.
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