Alan Ayckbourn’s award-winning comic thriller Communicating Doors will be revived by London’s Menier Chocolate Factory later this spring.
The time travelling tale will run at the London Bridge venue from 7 May to 27 June.
First seen in London in 1995, Communicating Doors tells the story of a hired dominatrix who, when she has to run for her life, escapes through a hotel’s communicating door and finds herself two decades in the past.
When it premiered in the capital 20 years ago, the play was nominated for the Best Comedy Olivier Award and won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Best West End Play Award.
The new production, which follows Buyer And Cellar into the Menier, will be directed by Lindsay Posner, returning to the theatre where he previously scored a hit with a revival of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party which subsequently transferred to the West End. Communicating Doors adds to a busy year for the former Royal Court Associate Director, who is bringing two productions – Harvey and Hay Fever – to the West End this spring.
Communicating Doors is the latest production in a string of Ayckbourn revivals to be staged in London in recent years.
In 2014, the National Theatre revived A Small Family Business a quarter of a century after the comedy premiered at the South Bank venue, while Relatively Speaking ran in London in 2013 and A Chorus Of Disapproval made the capital laugh in 2012.
The prolific playwright was honoured by the Society’s Special Award at the 2009 Olivier Awards.
Casting for Communicating Doors is yet to be announced.