Mike Kenny's stage adaptation of the 1906 children's classic The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit has made no. 5 in the Nick Hern top 10 most produced amateur titles of 2019! 

This story of a prosperous Edwardian family who nearly lose everything captures the anxieties and exhilarations of childhood with great tenderness and insight. Kenny’s imaginative adaptation offers three plum roles for young performers, and is eminently suitable for schools, youth theatres and drama groups. 

‘This glorious adaptation never for a moment runs out of steam’ - Guardian

Can you guess the others?

https://nickhernbooksblog.com/2020/01/16/most-performed-plays-of-2019/

Tickets are now on sale for Blithe Spirit at the Meadow Brook Theatre, Michigan's largest producing professional theatre. The smash comedy hit of the London and Broadway stages, this much-revived Noël Coward classic offers up fussy, cantankerous novelist Charles Condomine, remarried but haunted (literally) by the ghost of his late first wife, the clever and insistent Elvira who is called up by a visiting “happy medium,” one Madame Arcati.

The production is running from January 8 - February 2, 2020, and tickets can be purchased on their website.

Noël Coward's classic comedy runs at Salisbury Playhouse from Wednesday 22 April – Saturday 16 May, directed by Gareth Machin. 

In deepest Berkshire, retired actress Judith Bliss and her eccentric family have invited guests over for a weekend in the country. But the promise of an idyllic stay is quickly forgotten as the hapless visitors become playthings in the family’s self-made melodrama, resulting in comedic chaos.

Cleverly constructed, wittily written and brilliantly entertaining, this is Coward at his best. A sparkling comedy of manners for a summer’s evening.

General release tickets on sale 17th January 10am. Cast to be announced.

https://www.wiltshirecreative.co.uk/whats-on/main-house/hay-fever/

"Add a few ingredients
Bold and brave and new
Don’t you love how chocolate is so unlike you?" 

Emma Rice directs Wise Children's new musical adaptation of the hit film Les Émotifs Anonymes at Bristol Old Vic from 18 January to 1 February, before embarking on a major international tour.

Angélique is a gifted chocolate maker inhibited by social anxiety, so timid, she faints when people look at her. Jean-René is the boss of a failing chocolate factory, awkward, prone to embarrassing sweating and relies on self-help tapes. When Angélique takes a job in Jean-René’s struggling factory, a fragile love affair unfolds.

Funny, tender and painfully awkward, Romantics Anonymous is a delicious love story about breaking the mould and finding the courage to be happy.

https://bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/romantics-anonymous#overview 

Matthew Warchus directs Andrew Scott (BBC’s Sherlock, Fleabag) in Noël Coward’s provocative comedy Present Laughter. 

As he prepares to embark on an overseas tour, star actor Garry Essendine’s colourful life is in danger of spiralling out of control. Engulfed by an escalating identity crisis as his many and various relationships compete for his attention, Garry’s few remaining days at home are a chaotic whirlwind of love, sex, panic and soul-searching.

Captured live from The Old Vic in London, Present Laughter is a giddy and surprisingly modern reflection on fame, desire and loneliness.

Tickets and more information here

A parable about healing the wounds inflicted by a national trauma, The Wind of Heaven was first produced in the West End in April 1945, just three weeks before the end of the Second World War in Europe, starring Emlyn Williams himself. It now receives its first London production in nearly 75 years at the Finborough Theatre, well known for its recent rediscoveries of Emlyn Williams’ work, including the multi-award-winning Accolade.

The show runs till 21st December and you can get your tickets here 

The glorious, epic saga of the Antrobus family as they survive one apocalyptic incident after another: the dawning of the Ice Age in early 20th Century New Jersey; cataclysmic storm systems and flood in Atlantic City; the decimation of humanity through a catastrophic war. Devastating and devastatingly funny, magical and meta, explosive and exquisitely intimate - join this extraordinary family on their rollercoaster ride through time, trial and tribulation!

Shows on at and runs from November 22nd - 30th and you can find tickets here

For a full review click here 

Published in English for the first time, Refugee Conversations is a delightful work that reveals Brecht as a master of comic satire. Written swiftly in the opening years of the Second World War, the dialogues have an urgent contemporary relevance to a Europe once again witnessing populations on the move. 

The premise is simple: two refugees from Nazi Germany meet in a railway cafe and discuss the current state of the world. They are a bourgeois Jewish physicist and a left-leaning worker. Their world views, their voices and their social experience clash horribly, but they find they have unexpected common ground – especially in their more recent experience of the surreal twists and turns of life in exile, the bureaucracy, and the pathetic failings of the societies that are their unwilling hosts. 

Their conversations are light and swift moving, the subjects under discussion extremely various: beer, cigars, the Germans' love of order, their education and experience of life, art...

Jorge Silva Melo and Artistas Unidos offer us an unexpected view of the sophisticated and brilliant Noël Coward. Private Lives opens in Portugal on 14th November and runs until 1st December, you can find tickets here 

In collaboration with the British Library and the critically-acclaimed production of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Trafalgar Studios is very excited to be presenting a celebration of Peter Nichols’ works in this special event on Wednesday 27th November.

Directed by his grandson, George Nichols, and with special guest stars yet to be confirmed, take a look at Peter Nichols’ vast literary contribution with excerpts from his much loved television and stage plays including Promenade, The National Health, Forget-Me-Not-Lane and Poppy, as well as passages from his personal diaries and rare unproduced plays, kindly provided by the British Library.

For more information and tickets click here