The Autumn/Winter Season in The Drum

Theatre Royal Plymouth (TRP) is looking forward to hosting the upcoming season in The Drum, with a range of fantastic shows across different genres on offer.

Throughout September, October and November, audiences have a choice of interactive show, Love Letters Straight From Your Heart, that differs every night depending on the audience participation, to a returning James Wilton Dance show, The Four Seasons. Three shows have a close TRP link; a co-production in the hilarious Buyer & Cellar, a show by one of TRP’s associate directors in Outlier and a production devised and staged by TRP’s community project, Our Space, in Pierless.

Take a look at what’s on offer, and book your tickets now!

The Last Shout, 03 – 07 September 2024 (12+)

Written to mark 200 years of the lifeboat service, The Last Shout explores themes of courage, self-sacrifice and our innate need to help others.

Employing a combination of live action and dynamic soundscape, the production immerses audiences in two worlds – past and present.

Joe is an out of work playwright, searching for an idea. His partner, an NHS nurse, resents Joe’s lack of creative passion and artistic integrity.

When Joe begins researching the loss of all eight crewman aboard Cornwall’s Penlee Lifeboat at Christmas 1981, he finds himself drawn into a complex world of heroism, grief and selfless duty.

My Mother’s Funeral, 10 – 14 September 2024 (14+)

Abigail’s mum is dead. But it turns out she can’t afford her to be.

Did you know how expensive it is to die? It’s £4000 for the funeral. Extra for flowers. And even more if you want sausage rolls. Otherwise, she will get a council funeral and an unmarked grave.

Then, when a theatre suddenly pulls out of Abigail’s new project, she is asked to write about something else. Something more raw, from her ‘unique working class lens.’ Something that will make the audience feel really, really bad about themselves. Audiences like that, apparently.

Yep. To afford the funeral, she has to write about her mum.

With power and playfulness, Kelly Jones’s new play tackles the inequalities around death, and the cost of turning your loved ones into art.

Luke Wright: JOY, 18 September 2024 (12+)

Following the smash hit success of his Silver Jubilee show (“the best thing he’s done and that’s saying something.” ★★★★★ Telegraph) Luke Wright returns with a new set of poems that get to grips with the idea of JOY. Is it possible, as a 42 year old to feel pure unbridled happiness, and what does it look like?

The French novelist Henry de Montherlant said that “happiness writes white” but Wright’s not exactly starting with a blank page. With a mix of the of the comic and the wistful, JOY takes in consumerism, boozing, cancer scares, abseiling vicars, and the joy of language itself. We might have to go down to come up, but we’ll get there in the end. Come let a little joy into your life with a raconteur and wordsmith at the top of his game.

Outlier, 26 September – 05 October 2024 (14+)

“The sky was painfully big, but our worlds were small, our lives little. So when we found each other in the muddle of it all, that feeling of belonging was addictive.”

Mal, Ama, Lewis and Oskar have grown up together; hedonistically charging through life in rural Devon. Living from party to party, they’re railing against the stories that have been written for them as they stand at the precipice of adulthood. But all the space can be suffocating, and it’s tough sometimes – feeling so low in a place so beautiful.

The powerful poetics of Malaika Kegode (TRP Associate Director) and exhilarating music of Bristol band Jakabol combine with dynamic animation in this moving, autobiographical gig-theatre show directed by Jenny Davies.

Genre-defying and emotional, Outlier explores the impact of isolation, addiction, and friendship on young people in the often-forgotten places.

Outlier’s journey to the stage began as a part of Bristol Old Vic’s Ferment Fortnight in the Weston Studio in Feb 2020. It was commissioned by Bristol Old Vic and then further developed and co-produced by Liz Counsell and Bristol Old Vic with support from Arts Council England, Doorstep Arts and Barbican Theatre, Plymouth.

Little Murmur, 07 – 09 October 2024 (7+)

Little Murmur is a new dance theatre show for everyone age 7+, families and schools, that features ground-breaking projection, an extraordinary soundscape and a blizzard of paper and confetti.

 Diagnosed with dyslexia at a young age, Aakash Odedra found school very challenging: he spelt his name wrongly until he was 21 and it wasn’t until he “found the missing ‘A’” that he felt he belonged.

Defined by his learning difficulties, not his abilities, dance became his mode of expression.

Combining visual design and technology with dance and humour, Little Murmur explores the warped and exaggerated realities of living in a world you struggle to process. Based on Aakash’s hugely moving show Murmur 2.0, this stunning visual treat is an honest and heart felt conversation about the trials and tribulations of living with dyslexia, facing challenges and overcoming the odds.

Watch bodies and words fly like flocks of birds, a murmuration, a little murmur.

The Four Seasons, 10 – 12 October 2024 (11+)

James Wilton Dance, one of Europe’s most in demand dance companies, presents The Four Seasons.

Using Max Richter’s recomposed version of Vivaldi’s seminal work The Four Seasons, James Wilton Dance has created a work of immense physicality, driving energy and sweeping beauty.

The work features the company’s signature blend of capoeira, acrobatics, martial arts and classical dance, alongside stunning stage and costume designs.

This abstract, yet honestly human choreography relates each of the four seasons of the musical composition to the four stages of the universe, creating a kaleidoscopic visual feast for audiences that is not to be missed.

Love Letters Straight From Your Heart, 16 – 19 October 2024 (12+)

Join us as we raise our glasses to long lost loves and current lovers, to mums, to dads, and to absent friends.

Uninvited Guests stage an event that is somewhere between a wedding reception, a wake and a radio dedication show. In their signature performance style, they blur distinctions between theatre and social gatherings. Toasts are made, speeches given, songs sung and dances danced. They speak of their own and others’ loves – deep, passionate, ambivalent and unrequited – and play songs dedicated to them. 

This much-loved show returns to celebrate Fuel’s 20th birthday. In over 200 performances since 2006, Love Letters Straight From Your Heart has seen laughter, tears, hundreds of party poppers, and at least one proposal of marriage. It has been performed at two weddings, in every corner of the UK including in the Welsh language, and online to audiences around the world from Australia to Mexico.

Each performance of this show is unique, created with the audience who are attending. If you want to join us on this happy occasion, you will be invited to contribute a dedication to someone you love. Your letters of love may become part of the show; romantic gestures or signs of friendship, shared publicly between us. Be our witnesses and we’ll be yours.

Paradise Lost, 23 – 26 October 2024 (13+)

A one man staging of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost and not like whatever came into your head when you read the first bit of that sentence. Combining theatre, comedy and movement this is a journey through the story of the creation of everything, condensed into 75 minutes.

It is a show which brings you the highlights of this well-known but often forgotten story beginning with Lucifer’s rebellion and ending with Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. A single man plays all the characters, creates all the scenes and, despite his best efforts, falls a little short of perfection.

A show for anyone who has created anything (child, garden, paper aeroplane) and then watched it spiral out of control.

Buyer & Cellar, 29 October – 02 November 2024 (13+)

Meet Alex, an out-of-work actor who finds himself working beneath Barbra Streisand’s Malibu home in her legendary basement shopping mall. A big hit in New York and London, Buyer & Cellar is an outrageous comedy about the price of fame, the cost of things, and the oddest of odd jobs.

Ten years after the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway production closed, this hilarious one-person show returns to London with the magnificent Rob Madge starring as Alex. Rob is best known for writing and starring in their hit show My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?), which won the 2022 WhatsOnStage Award for Best Off-West End show and, following two West End runs, was nominated for a 2023 Laurence Olivier Award.

Written by Jonathan Tolins, known for his work on Schmigadoon! and The Good Fight and as showrunner of the new hit series Elsbeth, this production will be directed by Kirk Jameson (Song From Far Away, Madagascar The Musical) with Ingrid Hu (The Global Playground, Chotto Xenos) as scenographer, lighting design by Jack Weir (To Wong Foo The Musical, Death Drop) and sound design by Beth Duke (Death Drop: Back in the Habit, The Other Boleyn Girl).

Pierless, 07 – 09 November 2024 

It is the last show in the theatre at the end of the pier. Timbers creak and the waters rise, and as we countdown to the curtain-up, everything seems to be unravelling. Will the show go on? 

Theatre Royal Plymouth’s Our Space returns with its signature style of bold visual storytelling and immersive soundscapes in a show that explores memory, time, and the Great British seaside.

Feel Me, 12 – 13 November 2024 (13+)

Who do you care about and why?

Feel Me is a new interactive theatre show from The Paper Birds, UK leaders in devised verbatim theatre. Feel Me asks, via your mobile phone, who and what you care about from the stories unfolding live on stage in front of you.

A stunning mixture of live performance, film, projection, dance and music, Feel Me will explore the different lenses through which we are told, and connect to stories in the modern digital world. 

Worlds unfold from backpacks, and tents are constructed and dismantled again, each scene and location temporary, like a transient teenager in search of safety, acceptance and a new place to call home. An interrogation of empathy, Feel Me asks what makes us ‘feel’ for another person, as we journey through landscapes and across borders, through weather storms and paperwork, changing seasons, endless queues and interviews.

The Luminous, 14 – 16 November 2024 (14+)

Three women. A book. One unforgettable night.

Part Victorian thriller, part contemporary tale of friendship and rebellion, this time-travelling, genre-busting new show combines RedCape Theatre’s unique blend of physical theatre, dark comedy and gripping storytelling.

As protestors gather outside the hospital where they work, three women meet up for a monthly book club. This month’s book is ‘Luminous’ – a dark delve into Victorian London, where lurid stories are brought to life for entertainment in the penny gaff theatres: tales of an anonymous killer haunting the city and women whose bones glow through their skin.

In the twenty-first-century living room, the wine is flowing and the discussion is getting heated. Mighty thinks the book is outrageous, Mags thinks it’s the best thing she’s ever read, and Alice hasn’t got past page three. As the women get drawn deeper into the story, memories surface, unexpected connections are made, and the worlds begin to blur.

To find out more about any of The Drum shows, or to book tickets, visit https://theatreroyal.com/whats-on/.