With the critically acclaimed production of The Boy Friend currently running at the theatre, the Menier Chocolate Factory today announce the forthcoming two productions – the European première of Paula Vogel’s Tony Award-winning play Indecent, directed by Rebecca Taichman; and Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus directed by Patrick Marber, who returns to the Menier following his smash-hit production of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties.
In addition, also this season, the company’s production of The Boy Friend transfers to The Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto, with Kelsey Grammer as Lord Brockhurst; and its co-production with Chichester Festival Theatre of Laura Wade’s acclaimed The Watsons will open for a limited season at the Harold Pinter Theatre in May.
Booking for Indecent for supporters of the Menier opens on 20 January, with public booking opening on 27 January at 9am. Booking opens for Habeas Corpus in March.
Indecent will run 13th March to 9th May 2020. A seminal work of Jewish culture or an act of traitorous libel? Indecent explores the origins of the highly controversial play The God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch. We follow the path of the artists who risked their careers and lives to perform it in this deeply moving play accompanied by a small live klezmer band.
Indecent reunites Vogel and director Rebecca Taichman who co-created and directed the original production. Indecent had its world première production at Yale Repertory Theatre in October 2015. The play had its New York première Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre in May 2016, and transferred to Broadway in April 2017. It was nominated for the Tony Award for Best New Play received the Tony Awards for Best Direction of a Play for Taichman and Best Lighting Design of a Play for Christopher Akerlind (who will also light the Menier production).
The antics of the Wicksteed home are a darkly satirical merry-go-round in Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus which runs 15th May to 4th July 2020. Family, friends and the quest for sexual pleasures of the body (“corpus”) are the ruling passions in this farcical comedy of ill-manners. Through an escapade of mistaken identities and carnal encounters, one motto holds fast: “He whose lust lasts, lasts longest.”
