Stage: Season’s greetings

The Gabriels

Kate Tempest

Sir Ian McKellen

No, it’s not a very premature yuletide announcement but it is the time when two of the South East’s, if not the UK’s festivals reveal their programmes for 2017. Yes the Brighton Festival, now in its 51st year has just launched their programme for May and Chichester Festival Theatre have announced their own summer festival programme.

In Brighton the guest director is Kate Tempest who is bringing her own slant to the proceedings with a real emphasis on exposing the arts to as wide an audience as possible. Her mission statement, and it does feel like a mission she is passionate about, includes the statement “Everyday Epic”. It’s a great idea and one that she explains with an endearing clarity.

When it comes to theatre the Brighton Festival has an amazing reputation for excellence and for bringing the very best of stage work from around the globe. This year there will inevitably be a clamour for tickets to see a new trilogy of plays by the company that two years ago presented the Apple Family trilogy. The Gabriels by Tony Award Winning playwright Richard Nelson is set in real time during a turbulent US election year.

Local actor/director/creator Tim Crouch returns this year with an exciting new project. Crouch has achieved global acclaim for his innovative and often startling work and in this new work he is collaborating with Tony Birch and Julia Crouch for an outdoor event that will take place throughout May in Shoreham Harbour. This is the kind of experiential theatre that always excites and in the hands of Crouch and friends promises to be a highlight of the coming festival.

Internationally acclaimed Kneehigh are also back with their adaptation of the Cornish legend Tristan and Yseult. Director and adaptor Emma Rice has created many notable stage productions, including Brief Encounter and Rebecca but this particular production remains one of the company’s most loved shows. This is only the tip of an iceberg of great work in May this year.

Only the tip of an iceberg of great work

Over in Chichester the programme is as exciting as ever with the announcement that Sir Ian McKellen will be appearing in an ensemble production of King Lear. McKellen, who has recently won massive praise for a new production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, will no doubt be the hottest ticket on the theatre scene.

In recent years Chichester Festival Theatre have of course made a massive impact in the world of musical theatre revivals with nearly every new production being transferred, to great acclaim, into the West End. This year their two musical offerings will be Fiddler on The Roof starring Omid Djalili and Tracy-Ann Oberman and a new production of Caroline, or Change.

Richard Wilson will star as the headmaster in Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On in a production directed by Daniel Evans and Jonathan Kent will direct Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams. Again the very tip of an iceberg of excellent theatre programmed with skill to appeal to the widest of audiences.

Take a close look at both programmes too to find out the very best ticket deals, especially those aimed at younger audience members and group bookings.

For more information go to www.brightonfestival.org, box office 01273 709709

And www.cft.org.uk, box office 01243 781312