9 September - 27 November 2021
We are delighted to announce the World Premiere of Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell, opening at Cheltenham Everyman on 9 September 2021, marking New Adventures’ first visit to Cheltenham. The production will tour to 13 venues across the UK including Sadler’s Wells.
Intoxicated tales from darkest Soho
Matthew Bourne’s new World Premiere for New Adventures explores the under-belly of 1930s London life where ordinary people emerge from cheap boarding houses nightly to pour out their passions, hopes and dreams in the pubs and bars of fog-bound Soho and Fitzrovia. Step inside The Midnight Bell, a tavern where one particular lonely-hearts club gather to play out their lovelorn affairs of the heart; bitter comedies of longing, frustration, betrayal and redemption.
Inspired by the great English novelist Patrick Hamilton (Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky, Hangover Square) who created some of the most authentic fiction of his era; stories borne out of years of social interactions with the working man and woman at his favourite location – the London Pub.
Master storyteller Bourne once again joins forces with the Olivier and Tony award-winning team of Lez Brotherston, Terry Davies, Paule Constable and Paul Groothuis for this brand new production. The cast features twelve of New Adventures’ finest performers in roles that will challenge and reveal the darker reaches of the human heart.
This is a Dance Theatre event not to be missed.
Matthew Bourne said today:
“Patrick Hamilton’s literary world could be seen as the flip-side of his close contemporary, Noel Coward, whose witty and glamorous world of cocktails and high society made him so fashionable and successful. Hamilton, on the other hand, wrote about the lives of everyday people, full of pathos, comedy and thwarted romance. Indeed his own personal setbacks and increasingly serious drinking problem became the source from which he created his finest and most individual work. More than any other author of the time, Hamilton’s characters speak with the authentic voice of the era and it’s the raw passion and secret lives that lie beneath the conventional exterior that appeals to me so much”
Venues & Dates
Everyman Theatre Cheltenham
Theatre Royal Brighton
Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield
The Orchard Theatre
York Theatre Royal
Sadler’s Wells
Curve Theatre
Liverpool Playhouse Theatre
Oxford Playhouse
Hall for Cornwall
Warwick Arts Centre
Eden Court
Theatre Royal, Bath
