WELCOME BACK TO LIVE THEATRE!
Our new season of live theatre is here and we would love as many people as possible to experience unforgettable theatre from as little as £ 12 .
MULTIBUY TICKETS
If you book 3 or more Main Stage shows at once where you see this icon you will save 15% on all tickets*
* offer on selected shows only, on B&C tickets. Subject to availability.
BOOKING TICKETS
BOOK ONLINE:
You can book tickets on our website 24 hours a day at lyrictheatre.co.uk
BOOK BY PHONE:
The Box Office telephone line is (0)28 9038 1081 and is open 7 days a week 10am-5pm or until 7pm on performance days.
BOOK IN PERSON:
The main box office, situated at the front of the theatre, is open for in-person bookings 7 days a week 10am-5pm or until 7pm on performance days.
ACCESSIBLE BOOKINGS
At the Lyric, we are committed to making your visit as welcoming as possible and pride ourselves on being accessible to everyone who enters our doors.
We offer a free carer seat to any customer who needs essential assistance to attend the theatre, and offer audio described, captioned and signed (ISL & BSL) performances for all Lyric main stage shows.
Please contact our Box Office for more info or check out: lyrictheatre.co.uk/access
BABE-IN-ARMS
Babe-in-arms tickets are available for children under the age of two years old who do not require their own seat. This ticket is free of charge and can be booked through Box Office.
A WORD FROM...
OUR PRINCIPAL FUNDER OUR EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
As Northern Ireland’s leading producing theatre, the Lyric Theatre occupies a uniquely important place in our creative and cultural landscape. It supports the writers, actors, directors, freelancers, backstage and technical crews –all of those wonderfully talented people who work together to create their special kind of alchemy and give us audiences what we all want – a brilliant night out! From the development of new writing for the stage through special commissions and the New Playwrights Programme, to in-house and visiting productions of new works and modern classics (Friel makes a very welcome return with the co-production of ‘Translations’), right up to the ever-popular Christmas family show, the Lyric always delivers, and to the highest of standards.
Two Lyric productions from the current programme grab the eye. ‘This Sh*t Happens All The Time’, a deeply personal autobiographical monologue about homophobic hate crime from Arts Council-supported playwright Amanda Verlaque; and, from the Lyric Drama Studio (a programme of actor training for 18–25 year-olds), Jessica Swale’s eye-opening story about women’s fight for education and selfdetermination against the backdrop of women’s suffrage in the late nineteenth century. Both productions highlight the quality and the range of challenging, thought-provoking work currently produced by the Lyric.
The past two years have made everyone appreciate, more than ever, the importance and the value of the arts in our lives, and the untold joy of feeling inspired, stimulated and entertained by great theatre. The Arts Council, as principal funder, is proud to support the Lyric in all aspects of its work. Enjoy the show!
Roisín McDonough Chief Executive Arts Council of Northern Ireland
Welcome to our Spring/Summer 2022 Programme. I am incredibly proud to launch this programme. It feels like we’re finally stepping into a bright spring after a long winter of Covid.
The Lyric is committed to delivering quality theatre from exceptional artists; after all, our mission is to create, entertain and inspire. Our programme reflects Northern Ireland’s diversity, ingenuity, creative energy and theatrical talent. New work sits beside established classics, visiting shows, creative learning, and community workshops – all of which make a programme at the Lyric so far-reaching, eclectic and vibrant.
This season, we’re working with the Abbey Theatre on a significant co-production of Brian Friel’s masterpiece Translations. This production will be directed by Caitríona McLaughlin, their new Artistic Director and promises to be inquisitive and powerful. Another highlight is our continued commitment to New Writing and our production, in association with Imagine! Belfast Festival, of Amanda Verlaque’s This Sh*t Happens All The Time, is a combustive and searing play that confronts the darkness of male violence against women. It is an essential and profoundly affecting work of theatre, directed by Rhiann Jeffrey.
I want to thank our funders; without their support this theatre and the work our artists create wouldn’t exist. I, of course, want to thank our wonderful audience; you enabled us to survive the pandemic, and your appetite for theatre is what kept us going.
I hope you enjoy this season. Thank you.
Jimmy Fay Executive Producer
PLAY/WRITE MAKERS, WRITERS & PLAYERS
An Online Workshop Series
02–24 February 2022
NEW WORK OPEN CALL
We’re delighted to announce we’re now accepting submissions to make new work with us. Artists of all backgrounds and all levels of experience can apply whether you’ve completed a first draft of your play or you’re still at the idea stage. As part of this open call, we’re also welcoming submissions for the next iteration of our New Playwrights Programme.
For further details on how to submit, what to submit, and our submissions criteria please visit lyrictheatre.co.uk/newworkopencall
The deadline for submissions is 12 noon on Monday 28th February 2022
RESIDENT PLAYWRIGHT KARIS KELLY
We are delighted to announce a new Resident Playwright at the Lyric, Karis Kelly, who has won The Peggy Ramsay/Film4 Award 2021.
Having been nominated by the Lyric for her play Consumed, Karis is one of six people selected for the prestigious writing bursary, previously won by drama heavyweights Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson. As well as each receiving £10,000 to support them in their work, the playwrights will spend a year on attachment with their nominating theatre.
Karis has said: “I am so delighted to have been awarded the Bursary, and to have the opportunity to create with the Lyric during 2022. The Lyric has always been so supportive of my work and career, and feels like a really natural creative home for my writing. I can’t wait to get stuck in!”
YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS THEATRE SHOWCASE
This is as new as writing gets… A group of teenagers from across NI (ages 14-18) will spend Spring 2022 talking, reading and learning about playwriting, guided by Fighting Words NI dramaturgs and writing mentors. Each of the writers will create their own short play, and a team of professional theatre artists will help bring these hot-off-the-press scripts to the Lyric stage as rehearsed readings. Never predictable, always fizzing with humour and intelligence, the Young Playwrights showcase is your chance to witness performances crafted by NI’s newest playwrights.
This is one of many Young Playwrights projects that happen around the island of Ireland, as collaborations between theatres and Fighting Words creative-writing centres. Curious about the Young Playwrights Programme here in NI? Write to scripts@fightingwords.co.uk
DATES & TIMES
Sunday 29th May at 7:30pm
PRICE
Free event, booking essential
SPACE
Naughton Studio
THIS SH*T HAPPENS ALL THE TIME 22 MARCH–02 APRIL
A Lyric Theatre Production in association with the Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics
A young woman falls in love. Her girlfriend’s jealous ex-boyfriend responds with murderous intent.
In 2022 he’d be arrested but in Belfast 1992 homophobic hate crime law doesn’t exist. This Sh*t Happens All the Time uses personal experience to explore misogyny, coercive control and queer-baiting to ask why the privileges and protections granted to most of society remain disgracefully out of reach for Northern Ireland’s LGBT+ community.
“ WHO WE LOVE SHOULDN’T COME WITH A DEATH THREAT”
By Amanda Verlaque
DATES & TIMES
22 March - 02 April
Tues - Sat: 8.00pm Sat-Sun Matinee: 3.00pm
PRICE £12/£18
SPACE Naughton Studio
CONCESSIONS
Every 11th Ticket Free for groups of 10+
Free carer tickets
Age recommendation 12+
Directed by Rhiann Jeffrey
TRANSLATIONS 23 APRIL–29 MAY
A Lyric Theatre and Abbey Theatre co-production
It’s August 1833. The pupils have gathered in a hedge-school in the townland of Baile Beag/ Ballybeg. This Irish-speaking community in Donegal, has become the unlikely focal point for a changing world.
Progress is coming. Tensions are growing. There are plans for a new English-speaking national school and a group of Royal Engineers have arrived to map the area.
Translations examines the fractious relationship between people and nations through the lens of language and (mis)communication.
Brian Friel’s modern masterpiece finds a new potency, in a time where Brexit has thrown current Anglo-Irish relations into sharp relief, redrawing old boundaries, and opening up old wounds.
Abbey Theatre Artistic Director and Donegal native Caitríona McLaughlin opens a hotly anticipated new production of Translations in Belfast before a summer run on the Abbey stage.
“I think that is how the political problem of this island is going to be solved. It’s going to be solved by language in some kind of way. Not only the language of negotiations across the table. It’s going to be solved by the recognition of what language means for us on this island.” Brian Friel in conversation with Fintan O’Toole, 1982.
By Brian Friel
DATES & TIMES
23 April - 29 May
Tues - Sat: 7.30pm Sat - Sun Matinee: 2.30pm
PRICE
Previews: £12/£18/£24
Performances: £12/£20/£28
SPACE Main Stage
CONCESSIONS
Every 11th Ticket Free for groups of 10+
Free carer tickets
Age recommendation 11+
ACCESSIBLE PERFORMANCES
ISL/BSL: 14 May at 2.30pm
Captioned: 21 May at 2.30pm
Audio described: 22 May at 2.30pm
Directed by Caitríona McLaughlin
CREATIVE LEARNING AT THE LYRIC
Our award-winning Creative Learning department work with almost 15,000 young people and communities every year through a broad range of outreach and learning programmes. We believe that multiplying opportunities to participate in the arts is essential for the future of our youth, our creative industries and society as a whole. Many of your donations to the Lyric go directly to delivering this valuable work.
Here are some of our upcoming programmes:
Creative Learning have partnered with the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) to devise an exciting, new play which will tour to primary schools across Northern Ireland this spring:
A WALK IS NOT JUST A WALK
21 FEB–25 MAR
A Walk is Not Just a Walk by Jess Williams and Michael Beigel, follows five young friends as they go on an adventure through their local park. It highlights important environmental issues such as plastic pollution, littering and global warming!
This fast paced, physical show is performed on the floor of assembly halls; bringing the action closer to the audience! It provides an engaging new way for children to learn about the environment and encourages schools and families to take small steps to make positive environmental changes!
A Walk is Not Just a Walk will tour to primary schools from Monday 21st February - Friday 25th March.
Contact Erin hoey at erinhoey@lyrictheatre.co.uk to find out more and book a performance slot.
NT CONNECTIONS 22 APR–01
MAY
NT connections is back at the Lyric in person for 2022!
Each year the National Theatre commissions ten new plays for young people to perform, bringing together some of the UK’s most exciting writers with the theatre-makers of tomorrow.
You can book now to see the fantastic performances by the 10 groups of young people that are performing at the Lyric Theatre this year.
Visit www.lyrictheatre.co.uk for full information on dates and times.
KIDS IN CONTROL 29 - 30 MAR
KIC delivers an All Ability Physical Theatre Programme for the Lyric Theatre, culminating in performances at the theatre. The programme is open to teenagers of all abilities and includes recruitment workshops in local special needs schools, as well as volunteer recruitment and training in mainstream schools.
Going live for the first time in 3 years, showcasing pandemic adventures - physical theatre vignettes with highlights from film and zoom footage. As we emerge out of the pandemic we celebrate the resilience and creativity of youth.
DATES & TIMES 29 & 30 March 8.00pm
BLUE STOCKINGS 17–21 MAY
A Lyric Drama Studio Production
1896. Girton College, Cambridge, the first college in Britain to admit women. The Girton girls study ferociously and match their male peers grade for grade. Yet, when the men graduate, the women leave with nothing but the stigma of being a ‘blue stocking’ - an unnatural, educated woman. They are denied degrees and go home unqualified and unmarriageable.
In Jessica Swale’s debut play, Blue Stockings, Tess Moffat and her fellow first years are determined to win the right to graduate. But little do they anticipate the hurdles in their way: the distractions of love, the cruelty of the class divide or the strength of the opposition, who will do anything to stop them. The play follows them over one tumultuous academic year, in their fight to change the future of education.
“LOVE OR KNOWLEDGE: WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE?”
By Jessica Swale Directed by Philip Crawford
By arrangement with Nick Hern Books
DATES & TIMES
17 - 21 May Tues - Sat: 8:00pm Sat matinee: 3:00pm
PRICE £18
SPACE Naughton Studio
CONCESSIONS Student Tickets: £12
Free carer tickets
Every 11th Ticket Free for groups of 10+
ABOMINATION 06–10 APRIL
Presented by The Belfast Ensemble
Supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland & Belfast City Council
After a sell-out Belfast run at the 2019 Outburst Queer Arts Festival and fresh from their Abbey Theatre run, this award-winning smash hit opera finally makes its way back home!
Revolutionary in form, Abomination immediately changed the opera landscape, adding a distinctly Belfast voice to the international scene and setting a new benchmark for what Northern Irish opera artists can achieve in the 21st century.
It centres on the scandalous live radio interview given by NI Politician Iris Robinson when she referred to homosexuality as an ‘abomination’an act that has gone down in queer history and instantly re-ignited the equality debate. With their trademark high-impact, multi-disciplinary style, The Belfast Ensemble wrap this story in a fresh web of historical comments by DUP members on the subject of gay rights, marriage equality, ‘poofs’ and ‘perverts’ to shockingly theatrical effectchallenging the power of words in the hands of the powerful.
Contemporary, political, comic and emotionally complex, this riotous Northern Irish original redefined what new opera could say, to who, and why… with just a touch of drag!
By Conor Mitchell
DATES & TIMES 6-10 April
Wed - Sun : 7.30pm Sat-Sun Matinee: 2.30pm
PRICE
£12/£20/£28
SPACE Main Stage
CONCESSIONS
Every 11th Ticket Free for groups of 10+
Free carer tickets
Originally produced by The Belfast Ensemble and Outburst Arts for Outburst Queer Arts Festival 2019, with support from The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and British Council.
STONES IN HIS POCKETS 07 JUNE–03 JULY
Presented by Barn Theatre Company
Set in rural Ireland, Stones in His Pockets follows a small village that is turned upside down by the arrival of a Hollywood studio to film the latest historical blockbuster. Told through the eyes of local lads Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn, who are employed as extras, it soon becomes clear that Tinseltown’s romanticised dream of Ireland is a long way from reality.
Directed by Matthew McElhinney, son of the playwright and the play’s original director Ian McElhinney, this new production promises to bring an authentic rediscovery of the worldwide phenomenon, which has won numerous awards including both the Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best New Comedy, as well as three Tony nominations on Broadway.
The 25th Anniversary production stars Northern Irish actors Shaun Blaney as Jake and Gerard McCabe as Charlie with direction by Matthew McElhinney, design by Gregor Donnelly, choreography by Fleur Mellor, lighting design by Sam Rowcliffe-Tanner, sound design by Harry Smith, AV design by Benjamin Collins and Alex Tabrizi and Denise Cleal as costume supervisor.
By Marie Jones
DATES & TIMES
7 June - 3 July Tues - Sat: 7.30pm Sat-Sun Matinee: 2.30pm
PRICE
£12/£20/£28
SPACE Main Stage
CONCESSIONS
Every 11th Ticket Free for groups of 10+
Free carer tickets
Age recommendation 12+
Directed by Matthew McElhinney
THE SNOW QUEEN 25 NOV–31 DEC
A Lyric Theatre Production
Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale, this Christmas the Lyric Theatre present a glittering winter tale for all ages, The Snow Queen.
Gerda and Kai are inseparable, friends since birth, nothing can tear them apart. Until one winter’s day, Kai mysteriously disappears and Gerda is forced to set out on an epic journey through the seasons to save her best friend.
Join Gerda as she travels through a fairytale forest to the Snow Queen’s palace, and meets a colourful cast of characters along the way, in this charming story of love and friendship.
The sparkling Snow Queen invites the whole family to this glittering spectacle. For everyone who loves Frozen, come and see how it all began as the original Snow Queen casts her magical spell over the Lyric Theatre this Christmas!
“ A CHARMING STORY OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP”
DATES & TIMES
25 Nov - 31 Dec
Times vary
PRICE
Schools: £11 (£9 if booked before 31 Mar)
Previews: £12/£18/£24
Performances: £12/£20/£28
Family Tickets: save £2 per ticket (B&C tickets only)
SPACE Main Stage
CONCESSIONS
Every 11th Ticket Free for groups of 10+
Free Babe-in-arms tickets
Free carer tickets
MORE TO SEE AT THE LYRIC
HOW TO BURY A DEAD MULE 09–10 MARCH
How to Bury a Dead Mule tells the story of Norman Clements, Royal Irish Fusilier, his experiences of the front line battles of North Africa, Sicily and Italy during World War Two and his subsequent struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Norman’s account is brought to life in a one man show with original music, scripted by his grandson, actor Richard Clements who also performs.
SPACE: Naughton Studio
BEFORE YOU GO 05–07 APRIL
Sorcha O’Hagan is leaving for Australia. Only an overdue conversation with her father remains. Before she goes. With her mother dead, Sorcha was raised by her father and his family. They had a strong relationship, but his regular absenteeism was never talked about. As the sun rises on the border, the clock is ticking, and things need to be said...
By Laurence McKeown.
Presented by Kabosh
SPACE: Naughton Studio
GHOSTS OF THE TITANIC 12–16 APRIL
Blending fact and fiction together, this new drama set in the days after the sinking of the Titanic charts the swirling of rumours, political distraction tactics and fake news that followed. A bereaved woman trying to find out the truth about her fiancé’s death gets sucked into a maelstrom of questions.
Presented by Brill Productions.
SPACE: Naughton Studio
NO CITATION 04–08 MAY
When Jeremy D’wolfe McCarthy breaks into derelict Dimitri’s Piano bar, he gets more than he bargains for. Realising that this is his last stop he tries to set the record straight, all the while avoiding the Elephant in the room - Marguerite, the love of his mid-life crisis. This is such a powerful love story - it will make you happy; happy because you are nothing like him.
By Kyron Bourke
SPACE:
Naughton Studio
SHEDDING OF SKIN 14–19 JUNE
Time is different here. Out of unbearable pain comes inspirational strength. Three Furies, the voice of many women, meet to give rest to another. Through ritualistically sharing their stories of pain, abuse, resistance, and survival, the Furies strive to release this woman from the space between worlds.
By Vittoria Cafolla. Presented by Kabosh
SPACE: Naughton Studio
BREADBOY 27–31 JULY
It’s Belfast, 1977. Elvis “The King” Presley is dead and a 14-year-old boy wearing Denim aftershave has just been appointed breadboy in the last Ormo Mini-Shop in the world, delivering bread to the residents of the Upper Shankill. Following the smash-hit musical Paperboy, this new show will explore much-loved Irish writer, Tony Macaulay’s, second memoir Breadboy.
Presented by British Youth Music Theatre
SPACE: Main stage
WHAT’S ON AT A GLANCE
FEBRUARY
A Lyric Theatre Production
By Tara Lynne O’Neill
Directed by Kimberley Sykes
Coming Soon to the: