The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester invites audiences to experience a rich tapestry of life in its Autumn/Winter 2024-2025 program. With a lineup that explores the highs and lows of human experience, the season promises compelling performances to captivate the heart and mind. Highlights include 'Spend Spend Spend,' a vibrant musical comedy exploring materialism, and the thought-provoking plays 'Escaped Alone' and 'What if if Only,' which place older female characters at the forefront. Each performance offers a unique lens on life's defining moments, promising an unforgettable journey for theatre-goers.

A Season of Celebrations at The Royal Exchange Theatre

“I’m thrilled to be stepping into the worlds of these extraordinary plays in which Churchill so brilliantly explodes the domestic and the apocalyptic. It shouldn’t feel radical to put female characters over seventy years old centre stage but it still does. Churchill’s ESCAPED ALONE celebrates the emotional and intellectual dexterity that only older actresses can bring to live performance. WHAT IF IF ONLY is epic in its ideas and audaciously distilled in its form – a brilliant challenge for any director. I can’t wait to get started.” 

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Escaped Alone and What if if Only

The Royal Exchange Manchester

Addicted to excess and seduced by materialism, Viv takes us through the kaleidoscopic and messy journey of her life. From the two-up two-downs of Castleford to the grandeur of Garforth, to new handbags and husbands, Viv faces the ultimate question: after the champagne stops flowing, can money really buy happiness? This carnivalesque musical comedy is the big-hearted experience everyone needs this festive season.

Spend Spend Spend

Directed by Dermot Daly, the show was a huge hit during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2023 and subsequently opened in London to rave reviews. The show now runs for four performances at the Exchange where it was awarded the Bruntwood Prize in 2022.

Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz

Star of 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Have I Got News For You and QI Kiri Pritchard-McLean has had a busy few years. As well as hosting Live at the Apollo, fronting the Radio 4 panel show Best Medicine and starting a comedy school, she’s become a foster parent.

Kiri Pritchard-McLean-peacock

The Main Cinema

Experience life’s rich tapestry this season at the Royal Exchange Theatre with an Autumn/Winter programme that offers a glimpse into the highs and lows that life has to offer. Celebrating the events that leave us dancing and embracing those moments that come to define life.

Autumn Winter 2024

Royal Exchange, Manchester

The Palace nightclub reigns supreme in Athens’ hedonistic world. Its throne is occupied by The Duke and danger lurks in every beat. While the city prepares for a royal wedding four young ravers fight for a future they desire, each step bringing them closer to the edge of pleasure and peril. When they encounter an intoxicating forest, the lines between fantasy and reality blur as they find themselves caught in a dangerous game with some devious fairies. All this mayhem is overlooked by the Moon, a goddess of music in the sky.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This bold new play, created with and for the 2024 Young Company, brings together intersecting stories by three Young Company Writers Graduates: Rosa Gatley, Sharvi Rana and Jake Talbot. Mentored by playwright Becky Prestwich, this striking new work tackles head on the complex choices faced by young people in a fast-paced, ever-changing world. THRESHOLD is brought to the stage by director Tian Glasgow.

Threshold

For young people, organised by young people, the pre-show event #BeEarnest for The Importance of Being Earnest promises to be a welcoming space for people aged 14-30 to come together and socialise before the curtain opens on Oscar Wilde’s popular play.

BeEarnest

For Jack and Algernon, being young and rich isn’t easy. In fact, being swathed in luxury is, well…depressing. Tired of the never-ending soirees and penthouse shindigs, they escape their anxious existence (and Lady Bracknell) in the pursuit of love, real love, like, proper adult, IRL love, all under the guise of the ever-enigmatic Ernest.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Join award-winning playwrights Simon Stephens and Carmen Nasr as they host an evening of new work for stage, screen and radio, performed by actors from the Manchester School of Theatre’s conservatory repertoire.

A Night of new work, with simon stephens & carmenNasr

Helen has done it again, another fly-by-night flit dragging Jo from one Salford flat to another, only this time she has out done herself giving her daughter panoramic views of the slaughterhouse. But Jo can feel her Mum’s restlessness, another man will appear and lure her away and Jo will be left to fend for herself, so when Jimmie offers to stay for Christmas Jo is swept up in his charm and the promise of escape – no matter how precarious that may be.

A Taste of Honey

Tracey and Cynthia are best friends, and after 20 years on the factory floor their friendship is ingrained with the sweat of shared manual labour. Together, in this small Pennsylvanian town, they have celebrated birthdays, stood firm for each other and laughed until they cried. But as fat-cat factory owners look for cheaper options, where unions are no trouble, and employees will work for less, these women are about to have the rug pulled out from under everything they know.

Sweat

Mothers and daughters. Lovers, partners, husbands and wives. Babies, teenagers, birthdays, holidays, honeymoons, fireworks, near-misses, rain. This is a play about all of it.

Royal Exchange Theatre

Feb 7 - Mar 9, 2025

Escaped Alone and What if if Only

Nov 23, 2024 - Jan 11, 2025

Spend Spend Spend

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Royal Exchange Theatre