In the 1950s French novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet innovated a manner of storytelling focused purely on a drama’s inanimate aspects and on its incidental components. His stories spell out the habits and patterns of people: what they hold, where they sit and how they touch. Robbe-Grillet’s breakthrough novel, Jealousy (1957), repeatedly visits an assortment of compact scenes—each within the same day-and-a-half window—on adjacent plantations in an undisclosed location. From this place, whose surface we explore in aurally-discernible routes and patterns, comes a theatrical puzzle. The sum of these descriptions leads the story’s narrator, a man brought to a standstill by jealousy, to suspect an infidelity between his wife and their neighbour. What’s missing is the character whose very name contains an ellipse—three dots. We know her only as A

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Plantationa 

Arcola Theatre

Joe, Ross and Ellie used to be in a band. They were pretty good too, making waves across a rugged patchwork of pubs and clubs. But time has thrown the three friends far from their younger selves. Back together for one night only to play a benefit gig in their home town of Salisbury, they find a community reeling from an infamous poisoning and a pandemic. And as they rehearse the old songs together, their stories and secrets must also be excavated.

The Band Back Together

555: Verlaine en prison tells the untold and unjust story one of France’s most celebrated poets, Paul Verlaine who shot and injured his lover, the 17-year old poet Arthur Rimbaud. Despite Rimbaud dropping the charges, Verlaine’s homosexuality ensured that he received the maximum sentence – 555 days in Mons prison. 555: Verlaine en Prison, weaves together settings of Verlaine’s poetry by Debussy, Hahn and Fauré and extracts from his letters and poems to tell the poet’s extraordinary story in his own words.

555: Verlaine En Prison

One of Grimeborn’s most beloved companies returns for its eighth consecutive year. This season, Ensemble OrQuesta are expanding from the baroque repertoire to perform their 5-star production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro with a star company line up headed by Marcio Da Silva" class="css-u850">Marcio da Silva" class="css-u850">Marcio da Silva as Figaro and Helen May as Susanna. The evening will be accompanied by the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra Ensemble. In a minimalist production by Marcio da Silva, you will laugh your way through this amazing masterpiece.

Le Nozze di Figaro

Join Mr Punch as he and his friends help the wiley Serpina get her man. With appearances from Judy, The Crocodile, a Cheeky Monkey, a band of singing Policemen and a host of others, this is the perfect introduction to classical music for children (and grown up kids) of all ages. Featuring stunning operatic vocals and beautiful melodies as well as all the twists, turns, gags and the uproar of your favourite pantomimes.

Mr Punch at the Opera

Puccini’s timeless tale of love and friendship is radically repositioned as a modern tragedy of co-dependency and addiction. The creators of Turandot return to their first ever collaboration, La bohème, in a revival of this groundbreaking Olivier Award nominated production.

La Bohème

This hilarious and gory feminist retelling of a nineteenth century opera returns to London this summer for just four exclusive performances. Touching on themes of consent, agency and toxic masculinity, this updated revival of Gothic Opera’s witty debut production will feature new, innovative instrumentation

Der Vampyr

Gunnar and Malin have sent their daughter to the island, and desperately seek contact. On the farm next-door to the perpetrator’s, Petter and Inga realise their suspicions about him are well founded. At Central Command, Alf and Unni must decide on the best course of action in response to the attack.

Utoya

It’s club night and the tracks are spinning. Two headliners crossfade between stories of love, sex, and the power of music – set against a backdrop of precarious lives in urban London.

Bangers

A lyrical, charged, sharply observed and genuinely erotic two-hander, After Sex follows the trajectory of a couple, told almost entirely through post-coital scenes. It’s about how the sex we have can change us: a love-song to connection, and to people’s capacity for changing each other’s lives.

After Sex

Living life on her own terms, glamorous Violetta falls in love with young poet Alfredo. But their intoxicating romance takes a devastating turn when Violetta becomes the target of society’s double standards. Faced with an impossible choice, she sacrifices what may be her only chance of real love. When all is revealed, will it be too late?

Latraviata

Kathryn Hunter is an Olivier Award-winning Actress and Director. She has directed for Told by an Idiot, RSC, National Theatre, Royal Court, Young Vic and Shakespeare’s Globe.

Gigi & Dar

Set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, we follow the journey of four remarkable women on a road trip from Tunisia to Lebanon, through Syria. Madame Lilla, a mysterious and glamorous chameleon takes charge and leads revolutionaries Maryam, an Egyptian and Amira, a young Tunisian; and Ece, a Turkish journalist who can’t return home, headfirst through an adventurous journey that changes the course of their lives.

Women Who Blow On Knots

Following a run at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival which saw the show receive a nomination for the Best Show award, On And On And On is a return to stand up where Rose Matafeo explores all the regular stuff: love, loneliness, miscellaneous worries, her favourite fonts and death (order may vary).

Rose Matafeo On and On and On

We are living through a moment of horror. Brutality abroad in Palestine and the Global South is justified or ignored by our own government, while new police powers suppress protest at home. Globally far-right movements are growing and so too are Defence budgets. There is much to talk about.

Arcola Theatre

4 - 28 Sep, 2024

The Band Back Together

24 - 28 Sep, 2024

Latraviata

3 - 31 Oct, 2024

Gigi & Dar

24 - 31 Oct, 2024

Women Who Blow On Knots

Oct 30, 2024

Rose Matafeo On and On and On

11 - 14 Sep, 2024

Plantationa

4 - 28 Sep, 2024

The Band Back Together

Arcola Theatre