Streetcar and other news

The Playhouse’s Gemma Bodinetz and A Streetcar Named Desire -- should have seen this one coming! The Tennessee Williams classic has been unveiled as one of the highlights of the theatre’s spring season with its artistic director at the helm, and certainly sounds like a match made in heaven. Streetcar will be the first Playhouse production of 2012, to be followed by a collaboration with Shakespeare’s Globe on Henry V.  Amanda Drew will star as Blanche Dubois, Sam Troughton as Stanley Kowalski and Leanne Best as Stella. The cast will also feature Annabelle Apsion, Matthew Flynn and Alan Stocks, and it will be the first time Tennessee Williams has been produced in-house by the Playhouse in over 30 years. In April the theatre will collaborate with Shakespeare’s Globe on Henry V, which will open its national tour in Liverpool and reach the Globe Theatre in June. The production will be directed by the Globe’s artistic director Dominic Dromgoole. May brings Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests. An ingenious trilogy set over one weekend in different parts of a rundown country house is a comic and poignant portrayal of familial tensions played out from three different viewpoints. Tickets for Table Manners, Living Together and Round and Round the Garden will go on sale in March 2012. The plays may be watched in any order and there will be opportunities to watch the full trilogy in one day. After a season of in-house productions, the Playhouse will welcome back touring productions, including the multiple award-winning Mogadishu by Vivienne Franzmann, the return of the comic capers of Spymonkey with Oedipussy, and the critically acclaimed Bristol Old Vic production of Swallows and Amazons arrives following a West End run. Shared Experience return to the Playhouse with Mary Shelley, Helen Edmundson’s new play exploring the author’s remarkable life, while renowned contemporary dance company Phoenix Dance Theatre come back for two performances of Crossing Points.