Jazz Concert      featuring The Martin Hart Trio with Vasilis Xenopoulos on tenor saxophone      all tickets £12
 Saturday  25th January 2020
  • Ken McCarthy         Piano
  • Nick Pugh                 Double Base
  • Martin Hart              Drums

Preview evening date to be announced

 
'Things we do for Love'               tickets £12/£10
28 April – 2 May 2020
by Alan Ayckbourn
directed by Steve Atkins

Regarded by critics as being one of Ayckbourn’s finest plays, ‘Things We Do For Love’ is a painfully funny, technically ingenious and very physical (in all senses) play with many screamingly funny moments. Premiered in 1997, ‘Things’ hit the West End in’98, with a national tour in 2014.
The action is set in a Victorian house in Fulham owned by Barbara, with her ground floor living room occupying most of the stage.
 We also see a bit of the basement flat underneath, inhabited by Gilbert the postman, and the floor of the flat upstairs which Barbara is letting to her old school-friend Nikki, newly engaged to Hamish. Barbara and Hamish’s initial loathing of each other soon swings 180 degrees, and the fall-out from this fuels a hilarious second act as they are overcome with guilt and their old animosity flares up again. Ayckbourn in his prime is able to wring so much laughter from so much pain.

Jazz Concert      featuring The Martin Hart Trio    all tickets £12
 Saturday  16th May 2020
  • Ken McCarthy         Piano
  • Nick Pugh                 Double Base
  • Martin Hart              Drums

'Talking Heads'  (Part Two)                 tickets £12/£10
30th June to 4th July 2020
A second helping of the ever-popular Alan Bennett monologues
directed by Carol and John Burbedge

Bennett sealed his reputation as the master of observation with this series of ground-breaking monologues, originally screened on BBC TV, and then Radio 4, International Theatre and the A Level syllabus. "His finest achievement - indeed masterpiece wouldn't be too strong a word" (The Daily Telegraph)                                                              

‘A Cream Cracker under the Settee’ We meet Doris, an old lady who has had a fall while dusting where her home-help Zulema has missed and then looks back over her life and marriage as she reflects on her predicament and dusk begins to fall.                 
‘A Chip in the Sugar’ Graham lives with his widowed ‘Mam’ Vera. Vera has taken up with an old flame who is proposing marriage to her and eviction from his parents’ house to a hostel for Graham. Will it be ‘all change’ or a return to stultifying normality for him?                                                                   
 ‘Her Big Chance’ Lesley is an aspiring actress, who, after a series of unpromising extra roles on TV shows such as Crossroads, is offered what she believes to be her big break as the adventurous Travis in a new film.  But it’s for the West German market, and the director has requirements for Travis that Lesley is uncomfortable with; how far should she go in pursuit of her dream?


'Teechers'                                       tickets £12/£10
29 September – 3 October 2020
by John Godber’
 directed by Rebecca Moir

In the 1980s, Hull Truck Theatre became a global success story, and ‘Teechers’, written by its Artistic Director John Godber , was one of the plays that made it so.  ‘Teechers’ had a revival and tour in 2010 as Godber left Hull Truck after 26 years.  John Godber’s ‘Teechers’ is GCSE material.
It is a play within a play in which three students put on a performance to their teachers, acting out their time in secondary school – particularly their time with Mr Jeff Nixon, who has ignited their love for drama and the belief that all children should be treated equally. Fast-moving, inventive and highly entertaining, Teechers brings to life an array of terrifying teachers and hopeless pupils through the unique eyes of Salty, Gail and Hobby; three senior students about to leave school for good, using contemporary chart music for relevance.
Towards the end of the play the three kids learn that Mr. Nixon may be leaving to teach at a ‘superior’ school, and they start to understand how much he has helped them.
 
Jazz Concert      featuring The Martin Hart Trio        All tickets £12
 Saturday  17th October 2020
  • Ken McCarthy         Piano
  • Nick Pugh                 Double Base
  • Martin Hart              Drums

'Yerma'                                            tickets £12/£10
1st Dec to 5th December 2020
The classic by Federico Garcia Lorca
directed by Frank Kaye

“Drama is poetry that gets up from the written page and takes on human form.” The final play in Woodley’s 2020 season is ‘Yerma’ by Federico Garcia Lorca and is a brilliant example of Lorca’s philosophy, which Frank first staged in a radically reduced form at Royal Holloway as part of his drama course.
We now have the opportunity to stage in full this amazing statement of woman’s desire to have a baby. The key difference is the inclusion of Yerma’s husband, whose willing acceptance of Yerma’s infertility drives her to distraction. Her very name means “barren” in Spanish and we are taken on a glorious ride through the emotions and opinions of her society in this musically and poetically framed piece. . The play will be performed with the two key protagonists, Yerma and her husband, Juan, along with an array of villagers who will double many of the parts to result in a cast of maybe six or seven.
          Out in the fields
          for our baby we’ll make
          a little log cabin
          to keep us all safe.
So begins this incredible piece of drama with a musical, poetic form that is maintained throughout   The dramatic genius that is Lorca was cut short by a Franco firing squad in 1936, but though we lost the man we did not lose his work.