Explore our 2022 Season
- For the Culture – Celebrations of Blackness launches the 2022 season in January with a multi-art form festival honouring Blackness through art, performance, conversation, love and joy, curated by Dr Peggy Brunache, Tinuke Craig and Nicholai La Barrie
- A new partnership between the Lyric and Talawa Theatre Company – a co-production of Running with Lions by emerging writer Sian Carter directed by Talawa Artistic Director Michael Buffong opens in February 2022
- The world premiere of Mike Bartlett’s comedy for the new restoration of the theatres, Scandaltown, directed by Lyric Hammersmith Theatre Artistic Director Rachel O’Riordan premieres in April 2022
- Timberlake Wertenbaker’s adaptation of Jean Racine’s Roman tragedy Britannicus directed by Atri Banerjee explores monarchy, succession and divinity, from 26 May 2022
- Young Lyric partner and disability-inclusive professional dance company, Amici Dance Theatre Company celebrate their 40th anniversary with One World: Wealth of the Common People, bringing together an 80-strong cast on the Lyric main stage from 29 June – 02 July 2022
- For Summer 2022, Patrick Marber’s Olivier Award-winning Closer receives a major London revival directed by Clare Lizzimore, opening in July 2022
- Ola Ince will direct Roy Williams’ new play Heather, a modern adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in Autumn, from 29 September 2022
We’re delighted to announce our 2022 Season, combining re-lensed classics and cutting-edge contemporary work, to bring you exceptional plays examining power, love and loyalty, looking deeper into the themes that permeate today’s society. Tickets go on sale today, see the full programme and book here.
Season Multibuy Offer: Book three separate shows in our upcoming 2022 season, and get them for the price of two.*
*Must be purchased in the same transaction at the same time by 10 Feb. Discount applicable to Bands B – D only. The discount will automatically apply at the checkout.
Rachel O’Riordan, Artistic Director of Lyric Hammersmith Theatre said: “We are so proud and excited to be able to share this season with our audience. This past 18 months has been tough for our industry; theatre has felt vulnerable, as has our society. We are in a period of change and of shift; and at times like this, theatre is vital. The season we shared with you in 2019, my first season as Artistic Director of the Lyric, demonstrated our ambition and our passion. This current season builds on that and also responds to where we are now. The writers and directors whose work will be shared with you in our beautiful auditorium are bold, thrilling, artists. We look forward to welcoming the wider creative teams, actors and audiences to the Lyric, at the heart of West London. It is good to be back.”
For the Culture: Celebrations of Blackness
A festival honouring Blackness through art, performance, conversation, love, and joy
For the Culture: Celebrations of Blackness is a brand new festival celebrating Black joy, talent, culture and creativity, led and curated by Dr Peggy Brunache, Lecturer in the History of Atlantic Slavery & Director of the Beniba Centre for Slavery Studies at University of Glasgow, Tinuke Craig, Lyric Artistic Associate and Nicholai La Barrie, Lyric Associate Director.
Over the course of three days in late January 2022, the Lyric will host a programme of events and performances, which celebrate Black culture, identity and history. The full programme will be announced soon, including theatre performances, music, readings, discussions, talks, films, food, art, beauty and much more.
The Lyric joins forces with Talawa Theatre Company for the first time with Running with Lions, an intergenerational family drama and the debut play from exciting new writing talent Sian Carter, directed by Talawa’s Artistic Director Michael Buffong (A Kind of People, Guys & Dolls, King Lear, All My Sons), in a co-production with Talawa Theatre Company, the UK’s outstanding Black British Theatre Company. Running on the Lyric’s main stage from Thursday 10 February – Saturday 12 March 2022.
Joshy is gone. No badda bawl an disappear, yuh cyaan bring him back.
Following the death of a loved one, a British-Caribbean family struggles to come to terms with their grief. Isolated by their generational beliefs and challenges to their faith and mental health, they live between the things they do and do not say. Running with Lions explores the journey of one family’s reconciliation after loss and the rediscovery of love and joy.
A co-production with Talawa Theatre Company.
Following the success of Love, Love, Love in 2020, Mike Bartlett (King Charles III, Doctor Foster) and Lyric Artistic Director Rachel O’Riordan reunite in the world premiere of Bartlett’s new play Scandaltown. A troublesome comedy for the new restoration of the theatres set in our contemporary post-pandemic capital, full of illicit sex, political hypocrisy and the machinations of a fame-hungry elite. From Thursday 07 April – Saturday 14 May 2022.
When noble heroine Miss Phoebe Virtue receives worrisome news on Instagram that her twin brother Jack may be endangering his reputation in London Town, she decides she must visit herself, and investigate…
A Lyric Hammersmith Theatre production in association with Fictional Company.
Award-winning director Atri Banerjee brings an epic new production of Britannicus by Jean Racine, translated and adapted by Timberlake Wertenbaker, a tour de force of theatre, once described as “’the doyenne of political theatre”. This noble tragedy explores monarchy, dictatorship and depravity. From Thursday 26 May – Saturday 25 June 2022.
Tyranny always promises good things.
Power and succession are in the very bones of Rome. Agrippina, desperate to cling onto power, has ensured her son, Nero, is the Roman Emperor, in place of his half-brother and the rightful heir. But the corridors of power and Nero’s own obsession turn a once virtuous ruler into an oppressive tyrant.
One World: Wealth of the Common People
Amici Dance Theatre Company produced by Turtle Key Arts
The world’s first disability-inclusive professional dance company and Young Lyric Partner, Amici Dance Theatre Company, celebrate their 40th anniversary in the Main House at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre with their biggest production to date, Amici’s One World: Wealth of the Common People. The pioneering dance-theatre company will bring together an 80 strong cast of disabled and non-disabled performers from around the world. From Wednesday 29 June – Saturday 02 July, 2022. Tickets go on sale later this year.
Choreographed by the internationally renowned Wolfgang Stange (Tightrope, 35 Amici Drive) and devised by the performers themselves, Amici’s One World is a timely exploration of unity, tolerance and the ongoing refugee crisis told through projection, dance, spoken word and live music. It is part of an Amici celebratory week of workshops, photographic exhibitions and films at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre.
Amici will be collaborating with director Michael Vale (Macbeth, RSC; Bent, National Theatre), costume designer Tina Bicat (winner of the Critics Circle Award for Design for Punchdrunk’s Faust), and lighting designer Phil Supple (Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, Tower of London).
Closer, the Olivier award-winning play of the hit film, is a funny and uncompromising modern classic which cuts to the quick of human connection and the cost of risking it all for intimacy. Directed by Clare Lizzimore (Bull, One Day When We Were Young) in a radical new staging of Patrick Marber’s (Notes on a Scandal, Dealer’s Choice) iconic play. From Thursday 14 July – Saturday 13 August 2022.
‘I need you. I can’t think, I can’t work, I can’t breathe. We are going to die. Please…save me.’
Dan and Alice. Anna and Dan. Larry and Anna. Alice and Larry.
In the chaos of London; four strangers meet, fall in love and fall apart as desire turns to heartbreak. In a city out of lockdown, the play is as searing today as it ever was in its exploration of love, sex and the fragility of the human heart.
Following the success of Go, Girl as part of the Lyric’s reopening show Out West, Roy Williams returns to the Lyric with his new play Heather, a radical retelling of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, told through a modern lens of racial identity, class divisions and addiction. Directed by the award-winning Ola Ince (Is God Is, Royal Court). From Thursday 29 September – Saturday 29 October 2022.
I want this life and more. I want to see you, lady of the house, presiding yourself like Queen Nefertiti, over all of them.
Heather is newly married.
She’s finally living the life she always dreamed of.
She hates it more than she can bear.
Trapped in a conventional life brimming with social expectation and outdated ideals, free spirited Heather is plagued with thoughts of the freedom and passion she once knew. When she sees her life and sanity begin to unravel, she knows she must take control and break free of the box she has been put in.