The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre today unveils its new 2024/2025 season, featuring major re-lensed classics, including the Olivier Award-winning play Our Country’s Good, written by Timberlake Wertenbaker and directed by Artistic Director Rachel O’Riordan. For this major revival Timberlake Wertenbaker revisits her seminal play to address questions surrounding justice and prison systems under British rule. In this exciting and timely revival, coming to the Lyric from 05 September – 05 October.
As a major London producing theatre, the Lyric’s 2024/2025 programme features exciting national co-productions with some of the UK’s most prominent theatre companies, bringing this new season of work to audiences across the country.
Lorraine Hansberry’s ground breaking civil rights drama, A Raisin in the Sun, is re-lensed by Artistic Associate Tinuke Craig in a co-production with Headlong, Leeds Playhouse and Nottingham Playhouse, touring across the UK, before coming to the Lyric from 08 October - 02 November. Revelatory, pioneering and challenging, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun broke barriers as the first play by a Black woman on Broadway. Directed by Tinuke Craig (Jitney, The Color Purple), this classic play remains relevant and powerful in a world still divided by inequality.
Following the critically-acclaimed Jack and the Beanstalk in 2022, award-winning writer Sonia Jalaly and director Nicholai La Barrie join forces once again and bring a brand new take on the magical fairy tale of Aladdin, continuing the Lyric’s long history of bringing some of the finest and most entertaining pantomimes to London.
Completing this season is Play On!, the musical based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, conceived by Sheldon Epps and based on the book by Cheryl L. West, which explores the swinging kingdom of Harlem in the 1940s. Directed by Talawa Theatre Company Artistic Director Michael Buffong and featuring Duke Ellington’s timeless music, the large scale-touring production set in New York’s Cotton Club will celebrate its London premiere from 28 January – 22 February, in a co-production with Talawa Theatre Company, Belgrade Theatre, Birmingham Hippodrome, Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse, Wiltshire Creative, and Bristol Old Vic.