Five Unity Theatre shows you will want to see this spring
It may be cold outside as we head through the winter months and towards Easter, but the programme is hotting up at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre.
Old favourites sit side by side with new and experimental writing which doesn’t shy away from asking difficult questions or tackling uneasy topics.
The Hope Place theatre is also welcoming some regular collaborators and some new faces to the stage between now and the beginning of April.
Here are just five shows at the Unity that you won’t want to miss this season.
Dead and Breathing – February 7-17
The Unity is a partner in this dark comedy of ethics by writer Chisa Hutchinson.
Spiteful old Carolyn Whitlock has been sick with cancer for almost as long as she can remember and the pain has made her so mean that there’s no one left who loves her.
She just wants to give up, but now she’s going to have to work harder than she ever has in her privileged life to convince her very Christian nurse to help her end it.
But Veronika isn’t all she seems, and before Carolyn can die in peace, they’ll both need to let go of everything they believe about what is right.
Book tickets HERE
Those Two Weeks – February 28 to March 3
Ian Salmon’s new play comes to the Unity as part of a major UK tour.
It’s about listening to Cowboy Junkies and The Reynolds Girls, reading science fiction and arguing over the red/blue divide, realising your generation didn’t invent this stuff and you’re more like your parents than you think. It’s about new love and old love, coming together and falling apart. It’s about trying to make everything right that you made wrong. It’s the end of the eighties and everything’s about to change. It’s only two weeks but it’s Those Two Weeks.
Book tickets HERE
Place and Chips – March 9-10
What happens when we no longer feel at home in our own skin and can’t stop thinking about fish and chips and mushy peas…curry sauce and ketchup, with bread and butter and a can of pop?
Find out in Place and Chips, devised and performed by Alice Bunker-Whitney who some Liverpool theatregoers will remember from her role in Omnibus at the Unity last summer. She's raised £1,000 through Crowdfunding to stage Place and Chips, described as "a highly interactive, personal and riotous piece of theatre."
Book tickets HERE
Cornermen – March 13
Oli Forsyth’s boxing drama Cornermen comes to Liverpool in a co-production between Smoke & Oakum Theatre, Red Ladder and New Diaorama.
Mickey and his team of cornermen never seem to have much luck in the boxing world. The fighters they manage always end up losing and, after a bruising last outing, no one wants to work with them. Until, that is, they sign a young boxer whose winning ways catapult them into a world of success they’ve never dreamed of.
Book tickets HERE
Nina: a Story About Me and Nina Simone – March 17-24
Josette Bushell-Mingo’s acclaimed one woman show returns to the Unity where it all began, following a sold-out run at the Young Vic and success in Edinburgh and Sweden.
Described as a searing and soulful theatre piece inspired by the life and music of Nina Simone, the show features some of the Simone’s best-loved songs.
Taking in the singer’s political acts as part of the Civil Rights Movement in 1960s America as well as the struggles in her personal life, Bushell-Mingo finds a parallel with the persisting inequality in today’s society, and questions how far we’ve really come.
Book tickets HERE
For details of the full season visit the website HERE