The Young Vic have announced their new 2017/18 season, which includes the UK premiere of five-time Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Fun Home, and two world premieres, including one based in the Calais “Jungle”.
The eagerly anticipated Fun Home, based on Alison Bechdel’s celebrated 2006 graphic novel, made a sensational debut in a triumphant 2013 Broadway run that won five Tony Awards, led to a successful US National tour – and is set to arrive on these shores in June 2018 with a UK cast.
The new season opens with the Young Vic and National Theatre co-production of the global premiere of Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s The Jungle (7 December 2017 – 6 January 2018), set in the Calais “Jungle” – Europe’s largest unofficial refugee camp, and a temporary home for more than 10,000 people at its peak.
Directed by Stephen Daldry (best known for his direction of An Inspector Calls in the West End) and Justin Martin (The Audience), the vigorous new drama is penned based on the two Good Chance Theatre founders’ seven month residency in the camp, and explores the impact that well-wishers with good intentions can have when arriving into such crisis conditions.
This is followed by a revival of Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size (19 January – 14 February 2018), which was acclaimed when first produced at the Young Vic in 2007. There are two Brothers Size: Ogun, owner of an auto-repair shop… and Oshoosi, fresh out of prison, and desperate for true freedom. The Brothers Size was McCraney’s first play, going on to pen Oscar-winning film Moonlight, based on his script In Moonlight BlackBoys Look Blue.
Stephen Daldry then returns to direct The Inheritance (2 March – 5 May 2018), a new play in two parts by Matthew Lopez. Providing a panoramic view of gay life in New York City today, a generation after the AIDS crisis, the show follows real estate developers, actors, mothers and the destitute, all looking for the best way to live – socially, politically, morally, sexually – in the new realities of modern day America. The production will be designed by Olivier Award nominee Bob Crowley.
Finally, Fun Home (18 June – 1 September) arrives at the venue with its honest and heart-warming musical account of growing up gay in a uniquely complicated family, with a mother, brothers and a volatile, brilliant father. Led by prominent New York director Sam Gold, Jeanine Tesori’s music and Lisa Kron’s book and lyrics will be performed by a UK cast, as the ground-breaking and multi award-winning adaptation of Bechdel’s graphic novels arrives to explore how we see our parents through grown-up eyes.
It has also been announced that Josh Roche will direct My Name Is Rachel Corrie (29 September – 21 October 2017) as the JMK Award-winning production for 2017, running in the Young Vic’s Clare Studio. Erin Doherty will play the memory-based account of the extraordinary titular woman, a 23 year old American peace campaigner killed by an Israeli tank while protecting Palestinian homes from demolition. Edited from her vivid diaries and emails by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, My Name Is Rachel Corrie is a testament to Rachel’s skill as a writer and commitment to her cause.
David Lan, who was recently announced to be stepping down after two decades as Artistic Director, will continue to oversee the 2017/18 season, his last at the venue. He commented, “Putting a season together is always a mixture of chance and intention. My intention is always that the voices you hear at the Young Vic will be the most urgent, the most in need of being heard. Chance is that I happen to be in the right place at the right time to hear them.”
“Patterns emerge: in all the shows in this new season you’ll hear voices from the edge – refugees, the black working class, young gay women, young gay men – engaged voices raised in protest and in discovery.”
Tickets for the new season can be purchased through the venue’s website.