Theatre Royal Bath

LIGHTS UP!

Theatre Royal Bath is set to make a blockbuster return with their 2021 programme...

Theatre Royal Bath has announced a packed programme of drama, comedies, thrillers, musicals and a Christmas pantomime programmed for the year ahead. Danny Moar, Director of Theatre Royal Bath, said ahead of the Theatre's reopening last month. “I am delighted to be able to announce an exceptional range of shows for our Lights Up season.

“Lights Up” is the announcement made backstage to the acting company and production staff by stage management indicating that the play is about to begin or resume. They are two words that have been uttered literally thousands of times in the long history of our theatre, and they seem particularly apt now as we prepare to invite audience members to take to their seats once again at the Theatre Royal Bath. We know theatregoers are looking forward to

SIX will be coming to Theatre Royal Bath

coming back and we can’t wait to get going.”

Drama highlights in the season include a visit by one of the world's greatest actors, Ralph Fiennes, in the world premiere stage adaptation of T.S.Eliot's masterpiece, Four Quartets; Michael Frayn's multi award-winning Copenhagen, starring Philip Arditti, Haydn Gwynne and Malcolm Sinclair; David Mamet's riveting Oleanna, starring Jonathan Slinger and Rosie Sheehy which returns to the Ustinov Studio prior to a West

End run; A Splinter of Ice, a new play by Ben Brown, about the friendship between Graham Greene and Kim Philby starring Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer, and Ronald Harwood's evocative portrait of backstage life, The Dresser, starring Julian Clary and Matthew Kelly.

Thrillers range from Susan Hill's hugely acclaimed ghost story, The Woman in Black to a new adaptation of Peter James' Looking Good Dead starring Adam Woodyatt and Dan Brown's exhilarating blockbuster, The Da Vinci Code.

A wealth of comedy includes three equally hilarious productions from the UK's favourite farceurs, Mischief - The Play That Goes Wrong, Groan Ups and Magic Goes Wrong; Noël Coward's classic gem Private Lives, starring Nigel Havers and Patricia Hodge; a new stage version of the much-loved sitcom The Good Life; Told by an Idiot's acclaimed story of the most famous comedy double act that nearly was, Charlie and Stan; London Classic Theatre brings Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular, a comic tour-de-force which fuses a potent mix of farce and black comedy; locally-based, awardwinning New Old Friends perform their latest comedy thriller, Crimes, Camera, Action, and the return of one of the biggest comedy hits ever, The Play What I Wrote. The pizazz of the West End comes to Bath in the form of hit musicals Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s phenomenal smash hit musical about Henry VIII’s wives, SIX, returns

to the Theatre Royal after enjoying huge success on its first visit in Spring 2020. Traditional family pantomime returns for Christmas when Bath favourite Jon Monie stars in the best loved pantomime of them all, Cinderella.

The Ustinov Studio is presenting a vibrant Visiting Company Season of comedy, dance and drama; The Egg theatre's much feted Egg Assembly presents an exciting range of summer schools, and students from Bath Theatre Academy showcase their work both on stage and online.

Tickets for all shows in the Theatre Royal Bath’s Lights Up season can be purchased from the Theatre Royal Bath Box Office on 01225 448844 and online via the website.

• theatreroyal.org.uk

"Drama highlights in the season include a visit by one of the world's greatest actors, Ralph Fiennes, in the world premiere stage adaptation of T.S.Eliot's masterpiece, Four Quartets"

Julian Clary and Matthew Kelly in The Dresser