"Then there is no more left than this..."

In the blackened heart of catacombs long forgotten, by the stuttering and vapid light of one hundred broken bulbs, shadowy figures lurch from the gloom to re-enact an ancient tragedy, the tale of Abelard and his Heloise...

Reverence is a site-sympathetic promenade style performance, opening the new Southwark Playhouse under London Bridge station.

In just 90 minutes an exceptional cast brilliantly realises Shakespeare’s portrayal of a hunch-backed charismatic who devours all between him and the crown.

Puppets, percussion, and vaulting dark arches all reinforce a visceral, fast paced production.

Tangram Theatre is the winner of the first Better Bankside Shakespeare Award.

"Tom Wilson’s invaluable Shakespeare for Schools programme at Southwark Playhouse is a credit to the most theatrical of boroughs. Children from 22 state schools, most of them primaries, will see this show for free- a beautiful statistic in anyone’s agenda."
Time Out on last year's 'Macbeth'

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Sycamore Family.

At first the Sycamores seem mad, but it is not long before we realise that if they are mad, the rest of the world is madder.

This Pulitzer Prize winning play is a complete celebration of the joy of living, as the Sycamore family do exactly what makes them happy.

"This is better than many a west-end production and McAlinden should go far."
Kate Basset, Independent on Sunday on 'The Gigli Concert'

A festival of Lithuanian plays, music, film, design and talks

'Analogue is a young company certain to make its mark on British theatre'
The Guardian

'What a lovely day – sky so grey, you could just bang a nail into it and hang yourself.'

"en masse are one of the country's most exciting theatre companies making work for younger audiences."
The Guardian

"Like Abigail’s Party on acid... a whole new level of hilarity."
The Scotsman

A wife, a mistress and a daughter circumnavigate a husband, lover and father in a desperate dance of emotion. A portrait of three modern women trapped in a spiral of retribution and hectic despair.

"...burns with a passion that threatens to set fire to the stage"
The Stage

Set in New York during the Great Depression, Paradise Lost is a deeply affecting drama about one family’s struggle to come to terms with change.

Stoners, sex pigs & rehab casualties are the backdrop for two fame hungry lovers and their bunch of misfit friends.

You have no home and no money. Those you love were violently wrenched from you. Who do you turn to? What do you turn into?

A cross-cultural cast of actors, dancers and singers tells the stories of this character through vocal music, contemporary dance and a devised text, based on original historical documents.

Highly energetic, physical and packed with the energy of youth this really is Shakespeare at his most accessible and daring.

Maksim and his friend Lyokha are growing up in the dark and chaotic world of urban Russia. They are plagued by squalor and brutality, and for Maksim the only escape is to lovingly model figurines out of plasticine.

One winter’s morning, Caitlin walks out on her mum, her home and her life… and keeps on walking until she reaches an old dance hall in the woods where she hangs herself.

‘Moll is immoral, shallow, hypocritical, heartless, a bad woman: yet Moll is marvellous’

The Ethics of Progress is a mind-melting, jargon-free, whistle-stop tour of leading edge Quantum Physics...

"What makes you who you are? A name? An address? A random collection of experiences, a few memories? You are who you can prove you are. You are what people think and that’s the easiest thing in the world to change."

The Theatre Café Festival 2008 includes 2 new productions, 5 new European plays presented in staged rehearsed readings in the unique Theatre Café setting, the International Symposium and the Young Angels Theatremakers Award (2008) featuring Swedish hit play Invasion!.

A bare stage. Bare that is, except for the white lines marking out the (sometimes multiple) placements if a domestic environment. Furniture. Objects. Stuff.

Philip Pullman's brilliant modern classic is a zany, song-filled journey full of suprises.

“Some days we are the birds in the sky and others we are the statues below them”.

The toughest creative challenge in town. Some of the UK’s most exciting talent has one week to respond to the most important news story of the moment.

Fourteen musical instruments, four clowns and one wedding.

Southwark Playhouse re-imagines Shakespeare’s most magical play in Samurai Japan, bringing the mysticism of the East to the atmospheric cellars beneath London Bridge Station.

Raymond Chandler meets Greek tragedy in this political thriller charting the story of the 1953 Iranian coup alongside that of Alexander’s invasion of Persia in 333BC.

The toughest creative challenge in town. Some of the UK’s most exciting talent has one week to respond to the most important news story of the moment.

What price would you pay for peace? Could you tell a soldier not to fight? Even when he’s staring down the barrel of gun?

A play about teenagers, love, and the need to make radical choices. Sense is an intense, poetic journey into touching, inhaling, tasting, hearing, seeing and experiencing life to the extreme.

5 writers, 16 scenes, 6 million possibilities...

Stay and let them heal you. Or go with the Moon, and live.

I will kiss and beat thee all over...

Welcome to the wedding!
Food & drink. Song & dance.
Join us for a night of revelry & celebration.

Three strangers. Trapped in a disused bar. No food. No drink. No end… No way out.

Featuring new plays by Neil LaBute, Lucy Kirkwood, Anthony Neilson and Mark Ravenhill.

Sleep in the day,
Come out at night,
That’s when you see the real East End.

Following a critically acclaimed sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, EIF award winners, Belt Up Theatre bring their nightmarish and disorientating vision of Kafka’s classic to the Southwark Playhouse.

Following a critically acclaimed sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, EIF award winners, Belt Up Theatre bring their interactive and immersive re-working of Moliere’s classic to the Southwark Playhouse.

Forget about Disney…

Sheridan’s delightful tale of romantic entanglement and disguise is brought bang up to date in this inventive new production, featuring music, dance and an outstanding cast.

Behan combines sharp dialogue, black humour and live Irish music and dance to explore the play’s themes of prejudice and terrorism.

Shakespeare’s well-loved,controversial treatise on war and leadership is re-imagined on a life-sized board game, where the audience conspire to decide Henry’s fate on the battlefield.

Following their successful debut, I Confess, in Edinburgh last year, new company Firehouse Creative
Productions brings you Stella, a devised piece inspired by real life stories, a re-working of Goethe’s
original.

One man's meat is another man's poison. Interactive theatre in the raw.

Expect the unexpected as you discover the unsettling truth behind these two mysterious women.

In the heart of London in an under ground venue, an intriguing evening of music, theatre and great stories.

Huck, an outcast teenager and Jim, a runaway slave, are fleeing down the Mississippi on their makeshift raft...

A beautiful, expressionistic portrayal of a life lived wild, outside of law, free to experience everything that life and death have to offer…

Set against the continuing deprivation of present-day Zimbabwe this visceral new play brings a brutal beauty to the well-known tragedy of violence and betrayal.

A four day festival of plays and creative arts from East London, curated by Fin Kennedy and Luke Kernaghan.

A perfect wedding celebration is turned upside down when an unwelcome guest arrives.

A four day festival of plays and creative arts from East London, curated by Fin Kennedy and Luke Kernaghan.

A potent mix of tragedy and comedy with echoes of both Romeo & Juliet and Tartuffe.

Fuente Ovejuna is one of the great masterpieces of the Spanish Golden Age performed by an eleven strong ensemble of London's finest actors.

The Factory and Southwark Playhouse are pleased to announce that Ewan McGregor will offer insights into his life and work for a fundraising evening in support of The Factory’s forthcoming production, Boiling Frogs, which opens at Southwark Playhouse on 14 September 2010.

Inspired by the picnic protests held in Parliament Square between 2005 and 2007, the action unfolds against a world of ongoing natural disasters, countless public riots, the introduction of capital punishment for terrorists and temperatures reaching 42°.

Rediscover the city through the eyes of the lovers, the lost, the lucky and the lonely, those whose stories haven’t yet been written on blue plaques or in history books.

After a few drinks in a downtown New York bar, a boy takes a girl home to his squat: an empty flat in a high-rise building overlooking Ground Zero. Is this a one-night stand, or have they met before?

A writer who struggles to find words for her feelings takes on the role of a painter...

A writer who struggles to find words for her feelings takes on the role of a painter. When she comes to the Middle Eastern city ‘K’, she is searching for the perfect painting; an abstract image inspired by the work of Mark Rothko.

A night of fresh new writing on the drama, tragedy and comedy of love.

Blowing is an explosive farce, upgraded for the YouTube generation.

In The Same Boat presents Write to Play... with Dennis Kelly. Listen to Dennis in conversation about his life, career and work; hear a reading from one of his plays; and join us in discussion with Dennis about his themes, styles and methods of writing.

The melting clock on the wall has just struck 19:36AD. The poet Federico Garcia Lorca is dead and gone.

Following a critically acclaimed and sell out run at the Edinburgh Festival, Belt Up Theatre present a world where anything goes; a world trapped in limbo between two world wars; a world where social norms have become defunct; a world that gave birth to the Surrealists. It’s Paris, 19-something or something (time is a construct anyway) and the world famous group of Surrealists have gathered together to further their research. But the world outside is changing: Europe is on the brink of self-destruction and, far away on the Vega, one of their prophets, Lorca, is facing execution.

Hide your face amongst the Paris underworld and peek out to see a city of desolation.

An innovative reincarnation of Victor Hugo’s epic novel, Notre Dame de Paris, deconstructed and rebuilt around its audience in the form of Quasimodo.

A meta-theatrical play within a play within a comedy within a tragedy within a book within someone’s imagination.

Direct from a sell out and critically acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Festival comes a new play from James Wilkes. Atrium tells the story of one man’s refusal to conform to a common perspective of the world.

Once upon a time in a rural village in Ghana, Nyame, the powerful Sky God steals all the stories and locks them up in a wooden box under his bed, leaving the inhabitants of the village with nothing.

Everyone has lost all hope of getting them back until bold Anansi takes on the perilous task of confronting the Sky God.

In this lively alternative to the traditional Christmas show, everything hinges on the completion of an impossible quest, forcing a small but brave spider to confront her uncertainties and find hope in the most unexpected of places.

Following a critically acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2010, Belt Up Theatre bring their hidden gem of new writing to Southwark Playhouse.

In turn hilarious and affecting, Company presents the lives of five married couples through the eyes of perpetual bachelor Bobby. Experiencing the many ups and downs of relationships vicariously through his friends, he explores the social ideals of love, marriage and partnership – but will he ever discover what he needs to find happiness?

Across the country thousands of people are involved in protests and debates, sparked into action by the largest cuts to public spending since World War Two. Theatre Uncut is a national theatre event in response to these cuts, bringing together some of the UK’s leading dramatists.

Across the country thousands of people are involved in protests and debates, sparked into action by the largest cuts to public spending since World War Two. Theatre Uncut is a national theatre event in response to these cuts, bringing together some of the UK’s leading dramatists.

When a family comes together for the holidays, the head of the household is found murdered upstairs with a knife in his back. The telephone has been cut, no-one has reception and snow blocks their escape.
Left to their own devices, eight women reveal their claws, flaws and reasons for killing in this deliciously dark comedy. Each has a motive. Each has a secret. One of them is guilty. But which one?

Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World is Louis de Bernières’ only play. Written as a ‘play for voices’ in 1999, it was originally broadcast by BBC Radio Three. Influenced by Dylan Thomas' seminal piece Under Milk Wood, it is homage to a period of Louis de Bernières life in Earlsfield, South London and has never been performed live by a professional cast.

Allow the strangers your hand and follow as they lead you far below the streets of London into the tunnels and cells of Middlesex Prison. There begin your passage – a nightmarish journey into the mind of one of literature’s greatest serial killers.

Peer Gynt: He’s a chancer, a dancer, a wannabe romancer, a liar, a schemer, a good for nothing day-dreamer. You’re going to love him.

This performance does NOT take place at Southwark Playhouse.

This is a site-specific performance which takes place at:
The Bermondsey Square Hotel, Bermondsey Square, Tower Bridge Road, London SE1 3UN

Richard and Polly are brothers. Holed up in a knackered caravan on someone else’s land, their chicken has stopped laying and Rickson, the new land owner, wants them gone.

The first world premiere in three years by Philip Ridley

In 1943 J. B. Priestley wrote They Came to a City as a means of scrutinizing attitudes to the post war world. He recognised that through this horrific period in our history it may be possible for positive change to arise if the social will was there.

Following years of oppressive rule and violent insurgency, the Middle Eastern city-state of Thebes has arrived at a crisis-point. Two brothers, both terrorist bandits, have killed each other in a bloody battle just outside the city. The new ruler, General Kreon, calls in the West to enforce law and order. As dawn breaks over Thebes, Kreon and his Western allies decide enough is enough. One of the brothers will be buried with full honours. The other will be left to rot in the sand.

Elisabeth is a fighter: an optimistic saleswoman in pre-war Europe. When she is fined for selling corsets without a valid permit, her debts mount. Drowning in bureaucracy, Elisabeth attempts to sell her last asset- her corpse. Meeting a charitable person, the offer of stability and love rebuilds Elisabeth’s faith. But the unstoppable machinery of the state advances…

At the height of an English summer, wet-behind-the-ears Mole meets Rat, Badger, and the irrepressible Toad and is thrust into a thrilling new world. But as winter draws closer, Toad’s adventures take them far from the safety of the Riverbank and deep into the uncertainties of the Wild Wood, and hidden in the shadows of the lengthening nights lurk other creatures. And they have an old score to settle…

Class-Stage Productions bring you an exciting double bill previewing two new one act plays, both written and directed by Kirsty Eyre, with an all female cast, before going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the whole of August:

Delve into the heart of urban spaces with Akademi’s latest dance production song of the city. Muse, Artist and Man fall in and out of tune with the city, taking a journey deep into its heart to discover hidden and surprising revelations.

Little is known about the most famous assassins in British history. In 1170, four knights left the court of Henry II. Four days later Archbishop Thomas Becket lay brutally murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. The knights fled north, holed up in Knaresborough Castle as the country teetered on the brink of revolution, and waited there in secret for a year.

This performance does NOT take place at Southwark Playhouse.
This is a site-specific performance which takes place at:
The Bermondsey Square Hotel, Bermondsey Square, Tower Bridge Road, London SE1 3UN

The wedding nuptials are set, the King and Queen of the fairies are at war and rehearsals for Pyramus and Thisbe are due to commence.

A Double Bill of intercultural theatre as part of London- Beijing Connections

Featuring There's Only One Wayne Lee by Roy Williams and Magical Chairs by Mary Mazzilli

An evening of brand new contemporary plays, TaleBlazers showcases exciting new work from emerging playwrights.

In Atlanta, Georgia in 1913 Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager from Brooklyn, is accused of the rape and murder of a 13 year old employee.

In a time when women were second-class citizens, a group of wily ladies are determined to get their own way…

The Dramaturgs’ Network marks its 10th Anniversary at Southwark Playhouse with DN10, an event celebrating dramaturgy.

Witness The Factory create a detailed and dynamic, never to be heard again, improvised translation of Chekhov’s masterpiece.

Six actors, five chairs, one table and an ocean…

Compelled by the threat of bankruptcy, fishing trawler ‘The Violet’ and its mismatched crew are forced out into treacherous weather. Battling each others’ egos, their ‘lives’ ashore and a relentless storm. Will they lose more than a way of life? The bracingly physical tragic comedy from Bear Trap.

Shakespeare’s feistiest comedy is relocated to modern-day London. Brixton girl Kate has no time for smooth-talking Sloane Petruchio, but her father thinks she’s perfect.

The setting is a rundown bar in the Bronx, where two of society’s rejects, Danny and Roberta, strike up a halting conversation over their beer. He is a brooding, self-loathing young man who resorts more to violence than reason; she is a divorced, guilt-ridden young woman whose troubled teenage son is now being cared for by her parents.

A classic tale of twisted love, dangerous lies and sexual obsession reimagined in an evocative new production from JMK Award winning director Michael Oakley.

18 year old Sophie finds she has unexpectedly angered the evil Witch of the Waste and finds herself trapped...

An explosion of live music, story-telling and general mischief, Southwark Playhouse’s Main House will be showing Geoffrey Chaucer’s medieval masterpiece this Christmas.

November 27th 1978: Dan White shoots and kills Harvey Milk, the first openly gay American to hold elected office and George Moscone, mayor of San Francisco.
May 21st 1979: Dan White is found not guilty of murder.
Execution of Justice is the story of how and why it happened.

From multiple critically acclaimed and sell-out runs in London and Edinburgh comes a dark, beautiful tale of one boy’s awakening to the harsh realities of adulthood. Play with him, and take his hand as you lead him back to Neverland. A truly intimate experience from the inimitable Belt Up Theatre.

Port Authority is a play for anyone who has ever chosen the rational over the risky, who has ever drawn away from the possibility of brilliance, being left to wonder what might have been.

Unmasking a heightened world of seduction and power, The Shallow End walks the stark moral battle lines that were drawn at the dawn of a new age in British media.

Kentucky, 1925. Floyd Collins, soon to be acclaimed as the ‘greatest caver ever known’, dreams of finding fame and fortune underground. When a cave-in leaves him trapped 55 feet below the earth’s surface, the media circus above ground makes a very personal tragedy a national sensation.

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”
A Tale of Two Cities

Economic Crisis, a divided Europe, wide spread civil unrest on a global scale – in the 200 years since Dickens’ birth, not much has changed.

Following hot on the heels of the success of Tender Napalm at the begining of 2011, Philip Ridley returns to Southwark Playhouse’s Main House for the World Premiere of his latest play Shivered.

This production at Southwark Playhouse marks the play's first London revival in over 20 years.

August 2011. The curtains are drawn. The letter box is sealed. An eerie silence looms over the city. Celine is waiting, but what is she waiting for? Rifling through the tangle of emotions at the epicentre of this Summer’s riots, this is a searing new play by Deborah Gearing (Burn, National Theatre, Forest, Plymouth Theatre Royal, Rosalind: A Question of Life, Birmingham REP, The Cage, Nuffield Theatre, Southampton).

Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me is a startling testament to the power of the human spirit. Following an Englishman, American, and Irishman through their experience as hostages in Lebanon, McGuinness’ multi-award winning play is both funny and heart-wrenching.

‘Brilliant’ Stephen Fry
‘Inspired’ The Guardian
‘Arresting’ The Observer

This performance does NOT take place at Southwark Playhouse.

With unflinching theatrical force and explosive lyricism, Eugene O’Neill explores the tragedy of a forgotten voice and the perennial human need to belong.

The Irish Giant charts the tale of two remarkable men – Charles Byrne, Georgian London’s biggest star, an eight-foot tall Irishman; and John Hunter, a pioneering 18th century surgeon obsessed with life, death and abnormal bodies – and of a clash between science and belief.

One of the hottest London premieres of 2011, Tender Napalm is back at the space where it all began…

In Glorious Hill, Mississippi, Alma Winemiller has found herself trapped in the role of repressed and ‘affected’ daughter of the town minister. Hemmed in by her malicious mother, neighbourhood gossips and her own moral standings, Alma longs to escape her life of duty.

The UK Premiere of Sebastian Barry’s play comes to Southwark Playhouse’s Main House for four weeks, directed by Critics’ Circle Award Winner Blanche McIntyre

A classic Shakespeare re-imagined and re-fashioned. The battle of the sexes has never been more explosive.

From the creative team who brought you last year’s critically acclaimed production of Parade ★★★★★ “The best production of 2011. A triumph!” Evening Standard

A lawyer, desperate to find the son he drove away years before, engages the services of a mysterious magician, who conjures up magical visions of the romantic, adventurous and perilous life the lawyer’s son has been living before finally revealing the ultimate truth.

Based on Christopher Isherwood’s memoirs ‘Goodbye to Berlin’, and the inspiration for the musical ‘Cabaret’, I am a Camera is part glamorous whirlwind of Berlin Bohemia, part harrowing depiction of the Nazi’s rise to power.

One of the most popular plays of its day, The Busy Body is a brilliantly witty and fast-paced comedy packed with memorable characters.

Recently heralded as “theatre for everyone” by The Guardian, Deafinitely Theatre specializes in untold stories brought to life through the eloquence of sign.

Four years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and still we find ourselves in crisis. It’s time to work out what’s wrong. It’s time to look at the heart of the system.

1930′s Paris. In the decadent, heady cabaret clubs of the underground scene, the girls are beautiful and the boys are too.

Feathers in the Snow reunites director David Mercatali with playwright Philip Ridley, following their collaboration in 2011 on Tender Napalm which was named one of the Guardian, Observer and Time Out’s best shows of 2011.