April De Angelis’s Olivier Award-nominated play Jumpy will transfer into the West End this summer with fellow Royal Court-production Posh for a season at the Duke of York’s theatre.
2010’s critically acclaimed drama Posh will run from 11 May to 4 August, with last year’s Jumpy playing from 16 August until 3 November, with Tamsin Greig reprising her starring role in the production.
Both plays boast winning female writer-director teams with playwright Laura Wade once again teaming up with Lyndsay Turner for Posh and Royal Court-regular Nina Raine taking De Angelis’s play into the West End.
Dominic Cooke, Artistic Director of the Sloane Square venue, said: “As the world focuses its attention on London for the Olympics, it’s a great moment for the Royal Court to mark its groundbreaking contribution to British culture, and the leading role British playwrights take in theatre across the world, with a season in the West End. It’s especially exciting for us to return to the Duke of York’s which was the Royal Court’s home in the West End while our Sloane Square base was being rebuilt in the late ‘90s.”
Both razor sharp plays tackle class, gender and age. Wade’s Posh looks at the younger generation, centring on a group of 10 young bloods with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets. Members of an elite Oxford student dining society, the boys are bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and bloody good wine. But this isn’t just a jolly, they’re planning on a revolution and the night soon takes a sinister turn.
Jumpy was yesterday announced as one of the four shortlisted MasterCard Best New Play Award nominees at 2012’s prestigious Olivier Awards. The critically acclaimed drama stars Greig as a 50-year-old wife and mother trying to find her place in the world. After having once protested at Greenham, Hilary now finds her protests tending to focus on persuading her teenage daughter to go out fully clothed. The frank family drama was described by the Evening Standard as “perceptive, vigorous and entertaining”.
Full casting for both productions is yet to be announced.