The Stage

Balance of Georgian and new plays at Bury St Edmunds’ Theatre Royal

Published Tuesday 8 May 2007 at 15:00 by Alistair Smith

Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds artistic director Colin Blumenau has promised that the venue’s first season after its £5.1 million refurbishment will strike a balance between exploring lost Georgian works and providing a rounded programme for local audiences.

The venue, which reopens this September, has just unveiled the full line-up for its inaugural season following two years of work to return the venue to its Regency prime. As well as the already announced Restoring the Repertoire programme, which features a number of Georgian plays which have not been seen on stage since the 19th century, it will include contemporary theatre, dance, community drama, comedy and music.

Blumenau explained: “We’re rediscovering this repertoire that people haven’t performed for more than 100 years. Our mission is to do for Georgian theatre what the Globe has done for the Elizabethan.

“Traditionally, the venue has staged everything from opera to contemporary drama. The variety of the work we will now present isn’t different, but what is interesting is how it will sit alongside the Georgian repertoire.”

The season will also feature a new pantomime, Cinderella and the Glass Slipper, with a modern script by Daniel O’Brien, but staged using Georgian set technology and two other in-house productions - Black Ey’d Susan by Douglas Gerold and King Arthur by Henry Purcell and John Dryden, which is a co-production with the Goethe Theatre, the Handel-Festspiele Halle and the Lautten Compagney of Berlin. A series of rehearsed readings of Georgian plays will also be performed, and, if successful, the shows will be converted into fully staged productions in future seasons.

Meanwhile, the venue’s receiving programme will range from Salisbury Playhouse’s production of Northanger Abbey to comedian Ardal O’Hanlon to Humphrey Lyttelton and his Band.

To reflect the changes which have taken place over the past two years, the venue has also unveiled a new logo for the theatre and branding for the company.