The award-winning production Black Watch, which collected the Best New Play accolade at the 2009 Laurence Olivier Awards, is to be revived at the Barbican this autumn.
Black Watch joins an eclectic schedule of shows, ranging from much-loved musical theatre to polish productions of Macbeth, which will play at the Barbican this autumn.
The tale of one of Scotland’s most famous regiments and its experiences in Iraq, Black Watch sold out its 2008 run at the London venue before opening night. It returns from 27 November 2010 to 22 January 2011 before embarking on a US tour.
Simon McBurney’s Complicite, a company that regularly visits the Barbican, also returns to the venue this autumn, reviving Shun-Kin, a piece inspired by the writing of Japanese author Jun’chiro Tanizaki, from 4 to 13 November.
There are autumn returns for Polish companies TR Warszawa, which presented Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis last season at the Barbican, and Song Of The Goat Theatre, which will stage its version of Macbeth using text, movement and polyphonic song.
Dance Umbrella’s work also reappears in the Barbican’s schedule, with Merce Cunningham’s Nearly Ninety, Stephen Petronio’s I Drink The Air Before Me and Barak Marshall’s Monger.
Among the Barbican’s other autumn offerings are Hugh Hughes trilogy Floating, Story Of A Rabbit and 360, Belgium’s Company Thor, comedy from Arthur Smith and Angie Le Mar and child-friendly entertainment from Croatian company Theatre Mala Scena.
For many theatre fans, however, the highlight of the autumn season will be the much-anticipated return of Les Misérables to its original home, 25 years after the French revolutionary musical was first performed.
Bite’s programming stretches further than the Barbican’s walls, and the autumn season will also see boxing venue York Hall transformed for a production of Bryony Lavery’s explosive new work Beautiful Burnout. The co-production between the Barbican, National Theatre of Scotland and Frantic Assembly premieres at the Edinburgh Festival before embarking on a national tour.
MA