The Stage

New Bristol team unveil inaugural season at Old Vic

Published Friday 13 November 2009 at 15:54 by Alistair Smith

Tom Morris and Emma Stenning, the new artistic and executive directors of Bristol Old Vic, have unveiled their inaugural season of work at the venue, which will feature two main stage in-house productions.

The first will be Juliet and Her Romeo, directed by Morris. It is a reworking of Shakespeare’s play with the two lovers re-cast as pensioners in an old people’s home. The play has been re-ordered and cut, but uses Shakespeare’s original text. Morris said the project had been “a long time in the oven” and has been developed since 1997 in collaboration with TV producer and former theatre director Sean O’Connor. The show will run from March 10 to May 2. Casting has yet to be announced.

Bristol Old Vic’s second in-house production will be a revival of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away directed by newly appointed BOV associate director Simon Godwin, which will run from May 24 to June 9.

The season sees the venue moving away from its traditional repertory model of programming, with a large range of visiting shows playing at the venue for shorter runs. These will include Sound and Fury’s Kursk, which recently played at the Young Vic, as well as the Royal Court’s touring production of random by Debbie Tucker Green. The National Theatre will also bring its hour-long youth version of The Tempest to the BOV’s studio space.

Meanwhile, the BOV Young Company will present its own production Two, as well as working with musical theatre writer / director Phil Willmott on a work-in-progress production of his new musical based on the story of Princess Caraboo, a young girl who tries to pass herself off as exotic royalty in 1817 Weston Super Mare. This will be one of several ‘scratch’ or developmental performances which will take place around the venue during the season. Some of these will take place in a new performance space called The Paint Shop, which is the area that until now has housed the venue’s paint fram.

Launching the season, Morris responded to criticism that the programme did not feature any productions from the classical repertoire . He said: “There are lots of things about Juliet and Her Romeo which will appeal to people who like classical theatre. My view is there is no point in us, for example, trying to mimic the very successful programme which is operating in Bath. It feels to me there is an opportunity for Bristol to do something which is complementary to that.”

He also said that the BOV wanted to “balance our programme both within itself and also with those that are near us, rather than trying to do everything ourselves, and try to programme conservatively” and stressed that The Tobacco Factory in Bristol would be staging two Shakespearean productions in the first half of 2010.

Bristol Old Vic’s home the Theatre Royal was forced to close in 2007, citing safety issues with the building. Its then artistic director Simon Reade quit and its funding from Arts Council England was temporarily threatened with withdrawal. The 2010 season will be the first programme devised by its new artistic team, since the venue reopened to the public earlier this year.