Last Updated on 2 July 2021 by Showcall Editorial Team
London’s Donmar Warehouse is to reopen in September with a season of new plays as well as Henry V with Kit Harington
The Donmar Warehouse has announced its reopening plans with productions featuring Kit Harington, Rory Kinnear and Inua Ellams.
The building reopens with poetry event Search Party, written and performed by Ellams whose plays include Barber Shop Chronicles. Running from 21 to 25 September, it sees Ellams mine his archive of work in response to audience suggestions.
The first new play will be Cordelia Lynn’s Love and Other Acts of Violence starring Abigail Weinstock and Richard Katz from 7 October to 27 November. Directed by Elayce Ismail, it follows a young Jewish physicist and a left-wing poet who meet at a party and fall in love. As society splinters around them, the couple’s struggle to survive erupts into violence. It is a subversive and intimate love story about inheritance and the cycles of politics and history.
It will be followed by Tim Price’s stage adaptation of Ruben Östlund’s 2014 film, Force Majeure, which was postponed from last year due to Covid-19. It will run from 10 December 2021 to 5 February 2022.
Directed by Donmar artistic director Michael Longhurst, it is a black comedy about a family tested to breaking point on a skiing trip. The cast will include Rory Kinnear as Tomas, a dad whose single act of thoughtlessness leads to hilarious and tragic consequences.
Kit Harington will play the title role in Max Webster’s new production of Shakespeare’s Henry V from 11 February to 9 April 2022. It is described as a “thrilling study of nationalism, war and the psychology of power”.
Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play, Marys Seacole, puts “the concept of a biopic through a kaleidoscope”, running from 15 April to 4 June 2022. Inspired by pioneering Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole who bravely voyaged to heal soldiers in the Crimean War, it explores what it means to be a woman who is paid to care and how, ultimately, no one is in charge of their own story.
Marys Seacole had its world premiere in 2019 at Lincoln Center Theater in New York City. The UK premiere is directed by Nadia Latif, who directed Sibblies Drury’s acclaimed Fairview at London’s Young Vic Theatre in 2019.
The Donmar also announced the theatre’s first tour of schools, taking Mike Lew’s hit show, Teenage Dick – a re-imagining of Richard III – to 10 schools around the local boroughs of Camden and Westminster from 5 to 16 July 2021. It is directed by Blythe Stewart, with a cast including Jack Hunter as Richard.
Launching the programme of shows, Longhurst said: “We’re back with a season that mines history to examine our present, that holds society to account through personal stories, that is laced with comedy and poetry and packed full of talent for our shared entertainment.”
Public booking for all five shows at the Donmar opens on 8 July 2021 at 9am online and midday by phone.
