A comedy of identity by Anthony Weigh, a sci-fi tale of love and survival by Nick Payne and a revival of a Brian Friel classic will play at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2016.
Tony Award winner Stephen Dillane, well known to many as Game Of Thrones’ Stannis Baratheon, will lead the cast of Friel’s tale of a faith healer whose gift brings him into conflict with his wife and his manager, which runs from 23 June.
Dillane is joined in the production by Gina McKee, who starts the year in The Mother at the Tricycle Theatre, and is directed by the Olivier Award-winning director of Chimerica and the recent Benedict Cumberbatch-led Hamlet, Lyndsey Turner.
Before Faith Healer takes to the stage of the Seven Dials venue, the world premiere of Payne’s latest play will inhabit the intimate space.
Running from 21 April to 18 June, Elegy is set in a near future, where medical advances have made it possible to augment and extend life. Three women make the choice between love and survival in a world where the workings of the brain are no longer a mystery. But at what cost?
Payne’s latest play follows previous Donmar production The Same Deep Water As Me and his hugely acclaimed tale of alternate realities, Constellations.
The Donmar’s 2016 season opens with Welcome Home, Captain Fox! (18 February to 16 April), Weigh’s new version of Jean Anouilh’s Le Voyageur Sans Baggage.
Directed by Blanche McIntyre with a cast including Francesca Annis, Fenella Woolgar and Katherine Kingsley, Weigh has updated Anouilh’s 1937 play to the legendary hot summer of 1959. With the Cold War raging, Captain Jack Fox, who was previously thought lost on the battlefields of France 15 years earlier, is reunited with his family in The Hamptons. But is it really him and why are 22 other families claiming him as their own?
Before the 2016 season opens at the Donmar, winter production Les Liaisons Dangereuses will take to the venue’s stage. The production, which runs from 11 December and stars Dominic West, will also be screened by National Theatre Live on 28 January.