Bush Theatre’s hit play SHIFTERS transfers to the West End this summer

Photo credit: Craig Fuller

It has been announced that Shifters, Benedict Lombe’s intoxicating and fierce new romance, will transfer to London’s Duke of York’s Theatre from 12 August, following a sell-out run at the Bush Theatre earlier this year.

Heather Agyepong (School Girls; or The African Mean Girls Play, Lyric Hammersmith) and Tosin Cole (Supacell, Netflix), whose electrifying performances received critical acclaim in the original production, will reprise their roles as young lovers Des and Dre for a strictly limited season of nine weeks, directed by BAFTA-nominated and Evening Standard Theatre Award-winner Lynette Linton.

This epic and universal love story is about the enduring power of memory and young love. Meet Dre and Des, they are young, gifted, Black. He stayed. She left. Years later they come crashing back into each other’s lives, carrying new secrets and old scars. Caught in the space between memory and reality, they struggle to navigate the shifting borders that threaten to rewrite their past and reshape their future.

Playwright Benedict Lombe (Susan Smith Blackburn Prize-winner for Lava, 2022, Bush Theatre) said: "Shifters’ transfer is a big moment. Our dreamy, tender, unrepentantly romantic show about two lost souls finding a connection that can't be forgotten was a hit with Bush audiences. Now we get to recreate our magic on a bigger stage! I hope what Shiftersdoes – as well as invite new audiences to fall in love with Des and Dre – is accelerate the pace for the next wave of Black British female playwrights in the West End.”

The production features set and costume design by Alex Berry, lighting by Neil Austin, sound by Tony Gayle, composition by Xana, movement and intimacy direction by Shelley Maxwell, and casting by Heather Basten CDG.

Tickets go on sale at 12pm today (20 June), with 50% of tickets for the first four weeks available at £40 or under. Audiences will have the opportunity to experience the production from the intimacy of the stage with on-stage seating for every performance.

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