The Stage

Blasted to be revived in ‘provocative’ Lyric Hammersmith season

Published Tuesday 27 July 2010 at 12:55 by Alistair Smith

Lyric Hammersmith artistic director Sean Holmes is to revive Sarah Kane’s controversial debut play Blasted as part of the venue’s forthcoming season.

It will mark the first major London revival of the play, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1995, in nearly a decade.

Holmes, who worked with Kane early in her career before she wrote Blasted, told The Stage: “It’s the first major production since 2001 when they revived it at the Royal Court. I think the big difference now is the number of people who know the play, but have never seen it - anyone under 30 who has studied theatre knows the play, but might not have had the chance to see it.

“On a really simple level, it’s a play I’ve always wanted to do, it’s a really important play and I think the Lyric is the perfect theatre for it. We have the size of auditorium to deliver a proper, full-scale production and I think the youth and bravery of our audience will mean they want to see it. I think the first time it was done there was an incredible amount of fuss, the second time it was very much in the light of Sarah’s recent death, what I hope is that this is a chance for people to see the play for what it is, rather than other things getting in the way.”

The season will open on September 6 with a restaging of Punk Rock, Simon Stephen’s play which ran at the venue last year. Following that, the Lyric will host a co-production with Out of Joint of Richard Bean’s new play The Big Fellah, directed by Max Stafford Clarke. Blasted will follow in October, before the Lyric Christmas pantomime Dick Whittington, which will again be directed by Steve Marmion. It will be written by Joel Horwood and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm.

In January, The League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson will follow his previous Lyric production of Ghost Stories with an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Twisted Tales, in a co-production with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse. The season will then close with the Manchester Royal Exchange’s production of Mogadishu, a new play set in an inner city London school by first-time playwright Vivienne Franzmann.

Holmes added: “Apart from Blasted, everything is new work. Everything is quite excitingly risky - obviously we’re going into difficult times, but the thing you don’t want to do is retrench and become cautious. I think there’s a lot of provocation there -looking at who we are and how we live now, but sometimes in a bleak or surprising way.”