Mercury Theatre launches its 2016 Spring/Summer season

Lisa Maxwell to star in West End and Broadway smash hit drama • Regional premiere of Olivier award-winning comedy drama Clybourne Park • World War II drama from the producers of Birdsong • Spectacular dance showcase from Strictly Come Dancing favourites •

The Mercury Theatre today announces, with over sixty different productions in five months, its most varied Spring/Summer season ever.

Made in Colchester

The Made in Colchester season, our in-house produced work, opens with the West End and Broadway smash hit End of the Rainbow. Judy Garland is about to make her comeback…again. Battling a tornado of drugs and alcohol, she undertakes an exhausting series of concerts at the Talk of the Town in order to re-claim her crown as the greatest talent of her generation.

Starring Loose Women’s Lisa Maxwell and directed by Mercury Theatre Artistic Director Daniel Buckroyd, End of the Rainbow mixes drama, comedy and electrifying concert sequences featuring the music of Judy Garland.

Co-produced with Paul Taylor-Mills, End of the Rainbow will play at the Mercury from 12 February until 20 February, before embarking on a five month tour visiting 19 towns and cities around England and Scotland.

The Mercury will stage the regional premiere of Bruce Norris’s comedy drama Clybourne Park, before touring England and Wales. This razor-sharp satire lifts the lid on race and real estate in a fictional Chicago neighbourhood.

The swinging sixties are just around the corner as a black family move into a suburban white enclave, triggering all too predictable mutterings from the neighbours. We return to the same house in 2009, fifty years on, as gentrification sets in and the roles are reversed. 

Acclaimed by critics and audiences alike since its debut on Broadway in 2009, Clybourne Park took the West End by storm following a sold out run at the Royal Court Theatre in London. It has been awarded Best Play at the Olivier Awards, the Evening Standard Best Play Award, the South Bank Sky Arts Theatre Award and Critics’ Circle Best Play Award.

Clybourne Park will be directed by Mercury Theatre Artistic Director Daniel Buckroyd.

Rounding up the Made in Colchester Spring/Summer season will be Noël Coward’s classic comedy Private Lives.

Glamorous divorcees Amanda and Elyot haven’t seen each other in years. So when they find themselves honeymooning with their new spouses in adjacent suites at the same French hotel at the same time, they can’t believe it.

Mortifying at first, it isn’t long before the chance encounter reignites an old spark and the couple impulsively elope. But only a few days into their reunion, Elyot and Amanda again find themselves trapped in a repeating cycle of love and hate as their private passions and jealousies consume them.

Famously written in only three days, Private Lives premiered in 1930. Since then, numerous successful West End and Broadway revivals over the years have proven that this charming comedy of manners is still as fresh, funny and unexpectedly moving as ever. 

Artistic Director of the Mercury Theatre, Daniel Buckroyd, said:

“We’re excited to be producing three acclaimed and very different dramas at the heart of our new season – a ferocious, funny and fascinating look at the last few months of Judy Garland’s turbulent life; a delicious dark comedy about who we’re prepared to have as our neighbours, and a classic comedy of marital manners.”

Studio Theatre

The Mercury’s Studio Theatre, following a major refurbishment, will play host to a wide variety of new talent, hard-hitting visiting drama and comedy.

Continuing its commitment to developing new talent, the Mercury Theatre will be a partner venue for the National Theatre Connections Festival for the first time as they celebrate the 21^st anniversary of the programme. Connections plays are commissioned for and about young people from some of the best contemporary playwrights and are performed by schools and youth theatres all over the UK and Ireland.

There is plenty of drama to keep audiences enthralled this season starting with Crazy Glue, following the tragicomic roller coaster of a couple’s romance as they move from the blossoming of first love through to the thornier terrain of married life.

Flute Theatre present the UK premiere of Hamlet, Who's There, bringing their tersely contemporary take on Hamlet - a claustrophobic drama that compresses the traumatic events of the play into a single continuous night.

Living with Luke writer Paul T. Davies returns with his new drama Play Something, reflecting changes and lives of LGBT men and leading Black British theatre company tiata fahodzi present their physical adventure I Know All The Secrets In My World, a love duet for a father and son as they move through stages of grief, trying to find words for the unspeakable.

Thanks to privileged access to the letters of Eleanor Roosevelt, we discover one of the most extraordinary women of the 20th century, in Mrs Roosevelt Flies To London.

Audiences will hear the comic and poignant tales of four men, each from different parts of the globe, all experiencing a moment of revelation in Hassan Addulrazzak's one-man play Love, Bombs and Apples. Patrick Sandford also returns to the Mercury to perform his own extraordinary new play Groomed, which takes a darker look at education and how theatre can release, and music can set us free.

In association with the Mercury Theatre, Pleasance Theatre and APL Theatre, award-winning 2theatre bring us the world premiere of Boris and Ingrid, a hilariously sharp and unexpectedly poignant play exploring the inevitability of time, solitude and the joys of being odd.

There is a half-term treat for ages four and up when interactive theatre show The Boy Who Bit Picasso visits the studio. With storytelling, music and chances to make your own art, this hands-on family show introduces one of the 20^th century’s most influential artists through the eyes of a young boy.

Artistic Director of the Mercury Theatre, Daniel Buckroyd, said:

“We’re proud to be a host venue for the 21^st anniversary season of the National Theatre’s Connections Festival, and to have a full programme of more intimate, adventurous and original work on offer in our newly refurbished Studio Theatre – some of the most exciting new work is now playing and being created here in Colchester.”

Visiting variety

There is a whole host of visiting productions to keep you entertained, whether you’re a fan of live music, dance, comedy or musicals, .

Dance fans have a treat in-store this May when Strictly Come Dancing favourites Ian Waite and Natalie Lowe perform a spectacular Ballroom and Latin showcase.

The makers of the smash-hit Birdsong, return with their highly-charged wartime drama, Flare Path. Set in 1942, against a backdrop of heartache and quiet bravery, Flare Path paints an evocative portrait of life in wartime Britain for the RAF bomber crews and their wives and sweethearts, who were left awaiting their return. The Mercury’s restaurant, Food @ The Mercury, will go back in time with a World War II themed pre-theatre menu!

The award-winning Original Theatre Company return with a brand new production of the acclaimed comedy, Invincible. Written by Torben Betts – dubbed the new Alan Ayckbourn – the play follows a middle-class London couple as they move to a small town in the north of England. Over the course of a disastrous evening of olives, anchovies, Karl Marx and abstract art; class and culture collide where the consequences are as tragic as they are hilarious.

Actor Simon Callow probes into the life, work, triumphs and failures of one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century, Orson Welles. Cricketer Phil Tufnell teams up with his TMS colleague, Aggers to present an entertaining, no-holds-barred evening for cricket fans and non-lovers of the game alike in their show Aggers and Tuffers.

After two years of selling out numerous venues across London, Last Tango In Halifax actor Anne Reid presents an evening of songs and stories as she embarks on a UK tour with her cabaret show I Love To Sing.

Thanks to improvements made in the main theatre with the introduction of acoustic screens in Spring 2015, the Mercury is partnering with Roman River Festival to extend its classical music programme in 2016. One of the best-loved violinists and one of the most recorded classical artists in the world, Tasmin Little will be joined on stage by eminent pianist Piers Lane as the pair perform some of the greatest music written for violin and piano. Internationally renowned concert pianist Sergio Tiempo will also make his Colchester debut with a mix of classical repertoire as well as samba and tango-inspired South American music.

There is plenty of stand up comedy on offer this season starting in February with Lee Nelson when he brings his Suited and Booted tour to the Mercury. Multi-award-winning Russell Kane presents his brand new show Right Man, Wrong Age, Bridget Christie brings her tenth solo show A Book For Her, and Mark Steel presents his newest stand up show Who Do I Think I Am.

There’s circus fun for adults too when the Circus of Horrors roles into town with the show that stormed into the finals of Britain’s Got Talent and is now a West End and world-wide smash.

Dance lovers can journey to the heart of Spain with Jairo Barrull Flamenco Company’s El Llanto Se Mueve. Flamenco dancers Jairo Barrull and Irene ‘La Sentio’ are joined by a full cast of award-winning gypsy musicians from Andalucia to evoke the pure essence of flamenco’s soul: el llanto.

Popular community celebrations The Chinese New Year Gala and the Good Friday Service return and local talent shines when the Lorraine George School of Dancing and Performing Arts perform their showcase Show Time ‘16 and the year three students of Colchester Institute’s BA Honours Musical Theatre course perform the extraordinary new musical Big Fish.     

Tickets are on sale now. For more information, including performance times, prices and to purchase tickets, visit www.mercurytheatre.co.uk or call 01206 573948.