CityLife

North is the right direction for Octagon shows

The Queen of the North

David Thacker celebrates his third year as artistic director at Bolton’s thriving Octagon Theatre with a just-announced 2011-12 season of nine plays featuring some of the best in northern playwriting, new work (including a new play about iconic Corrie actress Pat Phoenix), classics and family drama.
 
“We are one of the only producing theatres in the country that conceives and promotes a year-long season of plays,” he points out, “which is thrilling for me because it lets us take our audience on a theatrical journey.

“Of course, the longer you’re working somewhere, the better you get to know and understand your audience.

“We’ve consolidated our central artistic mission and managed to hold to a policy we believe in, planning a season in which plays reflect on each other and themes from one play are picked up by another.

“Some of the central themes to our season include the fight for justice and freedom, sexual passion, truth and illusion, and hopes and dreams.

“The artistic director absolutely must believe in every single play and I’m very proud for the third season in a row, we’re performing nine plays that genuinely deserve to be done.”

The Season opens on September 5 with the world premiere of Bang Bang Bang, a new play by Stella Feehily, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, Out of Joint’s legendary artistic director. Running until September 17, it reveals the fascinating story around the lives of humanitarian workers dealing with real danger on a daily basis.

Continuing in the Octagon tradition of producing great American drama, David Thacker brings to the stage Edward Albee’s funny and ferocious rollercoaster of a drama Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? from September 22 to October 15.

Margot Leicester and George Irving, who recently appeared at the Octagon together in the MEN Theatre Award-nominated All My Sons and also in Ibsen’s Ghosts, star as Martha and George, the sparring couple whose insults flow as freely as the bourbon.

Thacker says: “Obtaining the rights to this marvellous play has been one of the most tortuous  processes ever! Edward Albee insists on knowing who the cast will be and seeing their biographies. So he, and I, obviously both think that Margot and George will be great!”
   
The theatre then returns to the work of Alan Bennett for the first time in 15 years with his bawdy and raucous comic play Habeas Corpus.
 
Set in Seventies Brighton, this play from one of Britain’s best-loved playwrights runs from October 20 until November 12. It is again directed by the hard-working Thacker and marks a change of tone from the hard-hitting play which precedes it.

There’ll be no place like the Octagon this Christmas when L Frank Baum’s classic story The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz is on stage from November 18 until January 14, 2012. It’s directed by Elizabeth Newman, whose wonderful production of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield was nominated for a 2010 MEN Theatre Award as Best Family Show.

Elizabeth will also be directing another two main house productions during the season, including The Queen Of The North (May 3–26) by Ron Rose, who wrote the brilliant MEN Award-winning The Enemies Within.

Following on from the recent success of The Demolition Man, based on the life of Fred Dibnah, this focusses on the life of another Northern legend, Pat Phoenix.

Immortalising the role of Elsie Tanner in Britain’s best-loved soap Coronation Street, Pat Phoenix lived a life off-screen that was just as dramatic as that of her on-screen persona. Legend has it that a TV executive accompanying the Queen on a tour of the Corrie set, said that he had the job of introducing the Queen of England to ‘the Queen of the North’!
 
“Pat was a ‘celebrity’ before that most contemporary of phenomena had got into full stride,” Ron observes. “Her life was fodder for the emerging tabloids. She was sexy and passionate, she always had star quality.”

Elizabeth will also be ending the season on a musical high note with The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice (May 31-June 23) from Bolton’s Jim Cartwright.

The Octagon also pay tribute to another great Bolton playwright, Bill Naughton, with the popular culture classic Alfie. Made famous by the film versions starring Michael Caine, and later Jude Law, the play takes us back to the Swinging Sixties. Directed by Thacker, the production runs from January 19-February 18.

Thacker explores his passion for transforming great works of Shakespeare into dynamic, contemporary theatre for a wide audience by tackling one of Shakespeare’s best-known works, Macbeth, running from February 23 to March 17. He also brings to the stage a play by one of Britain’s greatest Twentieth Century dramatists,Terence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy (March 29–April 21).

Tickets are now available on 01204 520661 or at octagonbolton.co.uk.