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Lyric Hammersmith

  • Theatre
  • Hammersmith
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Lyric Hammersmith
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Time Out says

Leftfield theatre remains at the heart of this striking Hammersmith arts hub

The Lyric Hammersmith is closed due to the coronavirus epidemic. The programme is technically due to resume with ‘Antigone: The Burial at Thebes’ on April 18.

Emerging in 2015 from a multimillion pound makeover, the Lyric Hammersmith is less a simple theatre, more a multipurpose community hub that includes everything from recording studios to digital development rooms.

But plays remain at the heart of it all, thanks to the singular artistic directorship of Sean Holmes, who has turned the Lyric Hammersmith into a venue both avant-garde and accessible, marking it with his own, very European directorial style. He's leaving in 2019, to be replaced by incoming artistic director Rachel O'Riordan, who's had an impressive run of success at the helm of Cardiff's Sherman Theatre.

Exploring the Lyric's interior is a play of two halves; the front of house areas are all shiny concrete-floored modernity. But step inside the theatre's auditorium and you're suddenly transported into a carefully preserved 1895 Frank Matcham-designed roccoco interior of rare splendour, complete with an unusual, curved proscenium arch. That's because when the original Lyric Theatre was demolished in 1969, its auditorium was painstakingly removed and carefully preserved in a new theatre down the road, which opened in 1979, before being thoroughly revamped and expanded in the 21st century. 

The Lyric Hammersmith's tickets are cheaply priced, with many major shows staging a free preview for local residents. It's never fuller than at panto season, when the auditorium is packed out with families, and its regular Little Lyric strand of programming lures in kids during the school holidays. 

It's also arguably one of the best spots in central Hammersmith to grab a pint and a bite to eat, not least on its first floor roof terrace, which is a green and pleasant oasis in the middle of gritty W6.

Details

Address:
Lyric Square, King St
London
W6 0QL
Transport:
Tube: Hammersmith
Price:
Various
Opening hours:
Check website for show times
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What’s on

Faith Healer

  • Drama

Lyric boss Rachel O’Riordan directs a major revival of the late Brian Friel’s stone-cold classic about The Fantastic Frank Hardy, a ‘healer’ who tours the villages of Ireland with his wife and manager, wowing locals with his charisma, if not his cures. Declan Conlon plays frank, with Justine Mitchell as his wife Grace and Nick Holder as manager Teddy.

Minority Report

  • Drama

‘Minority Report’ is now best known for the action-packed 2002 Spielberg sci-fi movie starring Tom Cruise. That was, in fact, a sexed-up adaptation of Philip K Dick’s dystopian 1958 novella, which played out more like a Cold War thriller than the hovercar-tastic excesses of the film. Nonetheless, its central vision remained the same: a future in which criminals are arrested before they commit a crime thanks to the efforts of seemingly infallible telepaths.  David Haig’s adaptation promises to cleave more closely to the book. But it looks like it will still be very much its own thing, with a new setting, characters and possibly even premise as it follows Dame Julia Anderton, the founder of the Pre-Crime programme, who receives a report saying she will commit a murder. Telepaths are not mentioned in the copy, which raises the distinct possibility that in Haig’s adaptation the Pre-Crime division is actually based on AI – something already being discussed as a possibility IRL. Max Webster directs this eye-catching opener to the Lyric Hammersmith’s 2024 season, a co-production with Nottingham Playhouse and Birmingham Rep with a cast TBC.

Fangirls

  • Musicals

Aussie writer and performer Yve Blake scored a cult domestic smash in the immediate pre-pandemic era with ‘Fangirls’ (aka ‘FANGIRLS’), a subversive musical that she wrote the book, lyrics and music for, and even initially starred in. Inspired by interviews with actual pop star fangirls, the musical follows Edna, a 14-year-old Australian girl madly in love with one ‘Harry’, a member of a massive-selling pop group (hmm, rings a bell). When the band comes to Sydney she’s determined to meet Harry – at any cost. Although it seems probable it will be substantially or totally recast, this is, nonetheless, a London remounting of the original production, headed by Australian director Paige Rattray.

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