Stage: A season of drama

Chichester Festival Theatre

Chichester Festival Theatre’s Winter season 2016-17 offers a scintillating array of outstanding drama from the UK’s finest touring companies, to appeal to all tastes and ages.

Edward Fox, Liza Goddard, Amanda Holden, Felicity Kendal, Robert Powell, Reece Shearsmith, Ken Stott and Imogen Stubbs are among the stars appearing in plays by writers from Alan Ayckbourn to Ronald Harwood. There’s also plenty of entertainment for families and youngsters from toddlers to teenagers, including Chichester Festival Youth Theatre’s Peter Pan for Christmas, and the hugely successful Running Wild which comes home to Chichester after a successful London run.

A scintillating array of outstanding drama

Edward Fox stars in a new, one-man play Sand In The Sandwiches, celebrating the hugely loved poet John Betjeman. Written by Hugh Whitemore (Stevie, Breaking the Code) and directed by Gareth Armstrong, Sand In The Sandwiches travels from Betjeman’s boyhood to life as Britain’s Poet Laureate, presenting an entertaining insight into a man famous for his passions and sense of purpose as much as his unforgettable poetry.

Minerva Theatre, 2 – 12 November

Amanda Holden, Angela Griffin, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Tamzin Outhwaite and Nicola Stephenson in Stepping Out. Funny and heart-warming, Richard Harris’s uplifting play Stepping Out charts the lives of seven women and one man attempting to tap their troubles away at a weekly dancing class. Initially all thumbs and left feet, the group is just getting to grips with the basics when they are asked to take part in a charity gala.

Festival Theatre, 8 – 19 November

Frantic Assembly bring their celebrated physicality to bear on Things I Know To Be True, a new play by leading Australian writer Andrew Bovell: a complex and intense story of a family and marriage through the eyes of four grown siblings that is both touching, funny, poetic and brutally frank.

Ages 14+ Minerva Theatre, 15 – 26 November

Also this season you can catch Robert Powell and Liza Goddard in Relatively Speaking (Festival Theatre, 22 – 26 November) Felicity Kendal in A Room With A View (Ages 12+ Festival Theatre, 29 November – 3 December) and Ken Stott with Reece Shearsmith in Ronald Harwood’s classic The Dresser (Festival Theatre, 25 January – 4 February)

Public booking opens:
Saturday 17 September (online only)
Tuesday 20 September (phone and in person)
Box Office 01243 781312; online cft.org.uk