Future Conditional, London
Matthew Warchus starts his inaugural season as artistic director of the Old Vic – following Kevin Spacey’s reign – with something very un-Hollywood. Tamsin Oglesby’s Future Conditional takes a look at our education system with the help of 23 young performers and one Rob Brydon. Among the characters are parents, teachers and a smart young Pakistani refugee who is also a member of the Education Research Board. A low-key start for Warchus, who directed Matilda: The Musical and last year’s indie film hit Pride.
Old Vic, SE1, Tue to 3 Oct
MC
Life Raft, Bristol
Georg Kaiser is probably best known for the expressionist plays he wrote during the first world war, but it is his second world war play The Raft Of The Medusa that fuels Fin Kennedy’s contemporary dystopian drama about a group of teenagers adrift on a life raft during a war. Kaiser’s play – apparently inspired by the real experiences of children sailing from the UK to Canada during the 1940s, when German warships were on the attack – was, with its theme of lost innocence, a forebear of William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies. Kennedy’s version – directed by Melly Still, whose successes include Coram Boy – relocates the story to a world in which resources are running out and the scramble for survival is becoming acute.
Bristol Old Vic, Thu to 5 Sep
LG
The Family Way, Bolton
Elizabeth Newman, the Octagon’s new artistic director, begins her tenure with a local story. Written by Bill Naughton, this intimate comedy is set in 1960s Bolton, where Arthur and Jenny are embarking on married life. But wedded bliss still seems out of reach: the wedding night definitely didn’t go as planned, and the presence of Arthur’s parents on the other side of the bedroom wall is doing nothing to improve things. At a time when many young people are forced to return home because of high rents this will be far more than a slice of nostalgia, and it’s a canny move to begin with a play that has so many local resonances as well as being a truthful account of the difficulties of negotiating family life.
Octagon, Fri to 3 Oct
LG
Brave New World, Northampton
Taking its title from Miranda’s famous speech in The Tempest, given when she encounters strangers for the first time, Aldous Huxley’s 1932 satire is set in a future world, a “negative utopia” where individual freedom has been sacrificed for the stability of the world and a genetically engineered class system keeps everyone in their place. There is an abundance of consumer items and no war, but neither is there any freedom of thought. Even spending time on one’s own is frowned upon. Sophie Ward stars in the world premiere of an adaptation by Dawn King, whose slippery dramas include Foxfinder at the Finborough and Ciphers at the Bush. James Dacre directs and These New Puritans supply the original music.
Royal & Derngate, Fri to 26 Sep
LG
King Charles III, Birmingham
Robert Powell plays Charles III in Mike Bartlett’s audacious and thoroughly entertaining “future history” play, which takes Prince Charles’s ascension to the throne as its starting point. There’s more than an echo of Shakespeare’s history plays in a drama that is written in blank verse, has a ghostly Princess Diana stalking the stage and sees Prince Harry getting sozzled in nightclubs. But this isn’t just a jokey satire. Rupert Goold’s production and Bartlett’s script may be very funny but they also investigate the unwritten rules of democracy, where power really lies and whether the rituals of monarchy really just mask the gaping hole at its centre. Clever and thought-provoking, it’s a play that should reign long and certainly deserves this touring revival.
Birmingham Rep, Fri to 19 Sep
LG
Lela & Co, London
The Royal Court’s new season kicks off at the Jerwood Upstairs with Cordelia Lynn’s debut, Lela & Co. An abstract view of sex-trafficking, it is based on real events as told to the writer. Meanwhile, the main stage sees the return of Martin McDonagh – known for such hits as The Cripple Of Inishmaan and The Beauty Queen Of Leenane, as well as the film In Bruges – to the theatre after more than 10 years. Hangmen (10 Sep to 10 Oct) looks to be typically dark, set in an Oldham pub and following the country’s second-foremost expert hangman on the day hanging is abolished in 1965. Matthew Dunster’s cast is led by David Morrissey and Reece Shearsmith.
Royal Court, SW1, Thu to 3 Oct
MC
