A MUSICAL by pioneering theatre company Thisispopbaby, along with works by emerging playwrights and revivals of plays by Tom Murphy and Bernard Farrell, all feature in the Abbey Theatre’s programme for 2012 unveiled today.
Many of the past and present productions will reflect the state of the nation. Tom Murphy's 2000 play The Houseis about a returned emigrant coming home to build a house with money gained by questionable means and was written during the boom years.
Murphy's play will run for a month from June 13th to July 14th and will be directed by Annabelle Comyn, who was the director of the successful production of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalionearlier this year.
Bernard Farrell’s Bookworms is set in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland and explores the impact of the bust on middle-class couples through the medium of a book club. The play was commissioned for the Abbey Theatre and was first staged in 2010. This revival will run from Thursday 9th February to St Patrick’s Day.
It will be followed by Thisispopbaby's Alice in Funderland,the first musical staged by the Abbey in 20 years.
It is the story of a Cork woman called Alice who encounters all kinds of characters from Alice in Wonderlandon a night out in Dublin. It has already been staged in the Project Arts Centre as a work-in-progress.
The book and lyrics are written by Phillip McMahon with music composed by Raymond Scannell. It will run from Wednesday, April 4th to Saturday, May 12th.
McMahon described it as a “rollercoaster parable of our times”.
The Abbey will stage the Trisha Brown Dance Company new production in May next year as part of the Dublin Dance Festival.
Seán O'Casey's The Plough and the Starsreturns to the Abbey stage for seven weeks next summer. It will run from Wednesday August 1st to Saturday September 15th.
The Peacock Theatre will stage I (Heart) Alice (Heart) Iby Amy Conroy, who is in the Abbey's new playwrights programme, from Wednesday, February 1st to Saturday February 18th.
Pat Kinevane's one-man play Silent,which has won both Fringe First and Herald Angel Awards at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year, will be staged from Wednesday, May 30th to Saturday June 16th.
The rest of next year’s programme will be announced at a later date.
abbeytheatre.ie
