The Royal Exchange’s anniversary season will also include the premiere of Even These Things by Rory Mullarkey, set during three periods in Manchester’s history, including one of the most dramatic days in the city’s and the theatre’s history, when it was damaged by an IRA bomb in 1996.
There will also be a premiere for the winner of this year’s Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Shooters by Tolu Okanlawon, about real-life African-American photojournalist Gordon Parks; plus a production of Tony-winning musical Fun Home; and revivals of Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.
Artistic director Selina Cartmell said the season would “renew our commitment to being a world-class theatre here in the heart of Manchester and an artistic engine-room for talent development in the North”.
The Royal Exchange receives the highest Arts Council England funding of any theatre after the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and is hoping to recapture former glories after a troubled few years.
It was hit hard by the pandemic and was at the centre of a censorship row last year when a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was cancelled, leading to the resignation of the theatre’s chief executive.