New Adventures announce world premiere of Matthew Bourne’s THE MIDNIGHT BELL

Photo credit: Johan Persson

New Adventures have today announced the upcoming world premiere of Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell, scheduled to open at the Everyman Theatre Cheltenham from 9 September 2021 as part of a UK tour.

After Cheltenham, the production will visit Brighton, Sheffield, Dartford, York, London (Sadler’s Wells), Leicester, Liverpool, Oxford, Truro, Coventry, Inverness and Bath.

Exploring 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.

Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell is 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.

Bourne said: “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.”

Bourne is joined by a stellar creative team including Terry Davies (music), Lez Brotherston (set and costume design), Paule Constable (lighting design) and Paul Groothuis (sound design) for this brand new production.

The cast will feature twelve of New Adventures’ finest performers: Paris Fitzpatrick, Glenn Graham, Bryony Harrison, Daisy May Kemp, Kate Lyons, Michela Meazza, Andrew Monaghan, Liam Mower, Danny Reubens, Christopher Thomas, Richard Winsor and  Bryony Wood.

This is a Dance Theatre event not to be missed, Besties!

For more information, please click here.