Donmar Artistic Director Josie Rourke Announces Spring Season in London

London's Donmar Warehouse, currently making its presence felt in New York with Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female staging of Julius Caesar at St. Ann’s Warehouse and Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive set to open at The Atlantic Theater in December, has announced its spring season. Led by Artistic Director Josie Rourke, it will be comprised of a mix of new and classic plays.

The season begins with Versailles, a new play by Peter Gill. Next year marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of World War I, and the show will be a reflection of its legacy. The play follows a middle-class English family in Kent. With their son in Paris at the negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles, the play is partly a love story and partly an historical examination of the treaty’s ramifications.  Gill will direct his own play with a cast that features Helen Bradbury, Barbara Flynn, Tom Hughes, Tamla Kari, Gwilym Lee, Josh O’Connor, Simon Williams and Eleanor Yates. The creative team includes design by Richard Hudson and lighting design by Paul Pyant. Versailles will play a limited engagement from February 20 through April 5, with opening night scheduled for February 27.

The second play of the season will be Privacy by James Graham and directed by Rourke. It poses the question: Is there any such thing as privacy in the 21st century? This follow’s Graham’s acclaimed National Theatre hit, This House. The creative team features designer Lucy Osborne, lighting designer Richard Howell 
and sound designer Christopher Shutt. It will run April 10 through May 31 with opening night set for April 22.

The final play announced is Fathers and Sons by Brian Friel, based on the novel by Ivan Turgenev.  Lyndsey Turner returns to the Donmar to direct Turgenev’s masterpiece, which reveals a new world in conflict with the old, the uneasiness of clashing generations and just how hard it is to stay radical when life gets in the way. It will run June 5 through July 26 with opening night scheduled for June 10.

In January 2014 work will be completed on Donmar Dryden Street. Donmar Dryden Street will bring all of the theater’s offstage work under one roof for the first time.

As previously announced Josie Rourke’s production of Conor McPherson’s modern classic The Weir will transfer to the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End following a sell-out season at the Donmar earlier this year. The original cast of Risteárd Cooper, Brian Cox, Dervla Kirwan, Peter McDonald and Ardal O'Hanlon will return. Performances are scheduled to begin January 16, with a opening night set for January 21.