Everyman & Playhouse look to 2021 as new shows announced for spring

Bold, innovative and brave theatre is back at the Everyman & Playhouse in 2021, as the theatres announce six exciting projects for spring. Among the season are local treasures, multi award-winning visiting productions and a Young Everyman Playhouse takeover of the Everyman auditorium.

One of the stand out success stories for the theatres during the pandemic, Love Liverpool: An A-Z of Hope moves from a podcast to the Playhouse stage in April. Threaded together with new writing by Chloë Moss and directed by Nathan Powell, Love Liverpool Live will bring the original commissioned letters and real life stories submitted by the public, and create an on-stage love letter to Liverpool.

Nathan Powell said: “I’m absolutely buzzing to be a part of this next chapter for Love Liverpool. During some really challenging months this year the series offered us joy, hope and a burning desire to be able to experience this city in all its glory again and I can’t wait to bring some of that hope and joy to the stage and across the city next year with Love Liverpool Live.”

In February, the Everyman presents My White Best Friend – North collaborating with Manchester Royal Exchange and other theatres across the North of England. Curated by Rachel De-Lahay, the show will feature letters from Black writers and writers of colour across the north. 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. This powerful and impactful work is a new northern iteration of My White Best Friend (and other letters left unsaid), performed at The Bunker and the Royal Court in London to critical acclaim.

Rachel De-Lahay, said: “Theatre in this country can be so London centric. I’m so proud to see this project be taken up North. I cannot wait to hear these brilliant writers dare say things they have, up until now, kept quiet.”

The Everyman should have played host to Young Everyman Playhouse’s (YEP) Macbeth in April 2020, and to make up for lost time the youth theatre will take over the Everyman in February to curate, devise and perform their own production, in YEP’s own provocative and anarchic way.

Matt Rutter, YEP director, said: “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. YEP are going to put on a real show for audiences this February!”

In March, a production that started life in the Everyman’s studio EV1 will make its way onto the Everyman main stage. Y’MAM takes audiences on a struggle with anger, and probes the unspoken anxieties, desires and fantasies of toxic masculinity.  This one-man show is a brutally honest auto-biographical piece by local writer Majid Mehdizadeh, performed by Luke Jerdy (Twelfth Night, 2014).

Majid Mehdizadeh, said: “It’s been an incredibly cathartic personal journey of creatively working with language to help battle my inner anger demons. I hope the words I’ve written can explode onto the Everyman main stage. I’m delighted to be performing in the City I call home, back at a theatre I love.”

Marking the return of some of the best theatre from across the country, the Playhouse hosts two visiting productions in February. Woke by Apphia Campbell and Meredith Yarbrough is a story of 20th Century African American experience. Sound tracked by powerful original music and traditional gospel, Woke follows of two women living 42 years apart, but both involved in the struggle for civil rights.

Julie Hesmondhalgh’s celebrated one-woman show The Greatest Play in the History of the World visits the Playhouse in February, with a story that starts and ends in a small, unassuming house on a quiet suburban road. Written by her husband Ian Kershaw, the production won The Stage Edinburgh Award 2018 at the Traverse Theatre, before transferring to Manchester Royal Exchange.

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 are on sale from January 2021. For the most up-to-date information on when tickets are on sale, visit www.everymanplayhouse.com and sign up to the latest newsletter.