Everyman and PLayhouse reveal new shows for spring 2021

Homegrown shows and acclaimed touring productions are on the programme for a new spring season at the Everyman and Playhouse.

The theatres have announced six new shows which will be staged in early 2021, Covid rules permitting.

Coronation Street, Happy Valley and Broadchurch star Julie Hesmondhalgh brings her award-winning one-woman show The Greatest Play in the History of the World to the Playhouse in February.

And Woke, by Apphia Campbell and Meredith Yarbrough, also comes to Williamson Square during the same month. The story of the 20th Century African American experience follows two women living 42 years apart but both involved in the struggle for civil rights.

Meanwhile the theatres’ successful Love Liverpool: An A-Z of Hope which was created online over the summer moves from internet to stage as Love Liverpool Live in April.

The online content is being threaded together with new writing by Chloë Moss and the show will be directed by Nathan Powell.

In February, the Everyman collaborates with Manchester Royal Exchange and other theatres across the north of England to present My White Best Friend - North.

The show will feature letters from Black writers and writers of colour. Opened and read live for the first time on stage by actors, these letters explore the personal and political of the things we don’t dare say.

The work is a new northern version of My White Best Friend (and other letters left unsaid), performed at The Bunker and the Royal Court in London.

The Everyman auditorium. Top: Liverpool Playhouse. Photo by Brian Roberts

Young Everyman Playhouse meanwhile will also take over the Hope Street theatre in February to curate, devise and perform their own production.

YEP director Matt Rutter says: “Lockdown had a huge impact on Young Everyman Playhouse, but as always our YEP members responded in the way they do best… by creating and working together to make their voices heard.

“We’re so excited to be able to get back into the Everyman in 2021 to celebrate the creativity of young people in Liverpool.”

In March, the Everyman main stage will play host to Y’MAM, one-man show by local writer Majid Mehdizadeh and performed by Luke Jerdy. The production, which started life in the studio EV1 studio, takes audiences on a struggle with anger, and probes the unspoken anxieties, desires and fantasies of toxic masculinity.

The new productions are in addition to already announced shows including Clive Anderson, Adam Buxton, Ed Byrne, Al Murray and the rescheduled Dial M for Murder.

All productions in the Everyman & Playhouse theatres’ spring 2021 season will be performed to a socially distanced auditorium, following government guidelines in place on the day of the performance.

Tickets for the new shows are on sale from January.