The Royal Court Theatre has announced its 2024 season of nine shows, the first for new artistic director David Byrne. The season features Agency Clients Stewart Pringle and Mark Rosenblatt. Byrne promises a “new generation of bold voices with big, messy stories to tell”. Agency Client Katie Mitchell is to direct Emma D’Arcy, Kayla Meikle and Ben Whishaw in a new adaptation of poet Maggie Nelson’s Bluets in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs between May 17 and June 29.
Artistic director Byrne called his first programme “more than just a season”, but “a statement of intent”.
The season also features John Lithgow as Roald Dahl in Mark Rosenblatt’s debut play Giant which explores the author’s anti-Semitism. Lithgow is joined by Olivier Award-winner Elliot Levey as the writer’s publisher. Lithgow said he was “thrilled” to perform at the Royal Court, adding that there was “no better place” to stage Rosenblatt’s new play, while Levey said it was “an honour” to make his acting debut at the venue.
Jack McNamara directs Stewart Pringle’s dark comedy about football in 1555, The Bounds, which will run between June 13 and July 13 after a run at Live Theatre. Pringle said: “It’s such an incredible honour and privilege to be presenting work in those hallowed rooms, where so much of the most important theatre I have ever seen first took place, and to be doing so in the first season of an artist like David Byrne, who I respect so much.” The Bounds is a darkly comedic tale of national divides, folk horror and the end of the world as we know it.