New season at York Theatre Royal

IT is all about balance.

On the one hand, York Theatre Royal's season ahead features such heavyweights as George Orwell's 1984, Pat Barker's Regeneration, Harold Pinter's Betrayal, the Greek tragedy Antigone, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and Arthur Miller'sA View From The Bridge.

On the other, comedy has its place too in Northern Broadsides' touring production of Oliver Goldsmith's Restoration farce She Stoops To Conquer in late-November and dowager dame Berwick Kaler's clash of good and evil in the December and January pantomime Old Mother Goose.

The scary November sight of Stephen Mallatratt's theatrical exploration of terror in A Woman In Black is always welcome too.

Running from September 16 to March 14's closing night of York Light Opera Company's South Pacific, the season will be the last before the Theatre Royal shuts for a £4.1 million redevelopment.

When the theatre reopens in December 2015 with the next Kaler instalment, the stage, auditorium, box office, entrances and bar and café facilities will have undergone a revamp.

"We're very pleased with what we've put together as the final season for the Theatre Royal in its present form," says artistic director Damian Cruden. "It's a great way to mark the end of this era for the theatre with such a vibrant season.

"In my time here, the building has changed so much. It's always been important to move forward and that forward momentum is very much displayed in the new brochure of shows, and we look forward to the redevelopment, creating a new building that will be much more able to deliver the kind of work we want to do."

Such a vision also includes the theatre's programming in the Studio and in the adjoining De Grey Rooms.

2015 may be a year of special significance in York Theatre Royal's history but 1984 does not carry such significance.

"It's not really the date that matters in Orwell's novel," says Damian, introducing the Headlong, Nottingham Playhouse and Almeida Theatre co-production that will open the season from September 16 to 20 with a radical re-staging of Orwell's exploration of surveillance and identity.

"1984 is an idea, and the reality is that it's not about the future but the present, the human condition, the people we are and the political systems around us, but set in an imaginary future and that's why it remains a classic novel that people are always interested in."

A play for the present, presented in a theatre with an eye on the future.

1984 may not be fixed date, but the resonance of 1914 is a different matter. The 100th anniversary of the First World War has prompted assorted theatre productions around the country, among them the Touring Consortium Theatre Company and Royal Derngate, Northampton's tour of Regeneration, which visits York from September 23 to 27.

Adapted for the stage by Nicholas Wright and directed by Simon Godwin, Pat Barker's story of poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen is a war saga in which not a shot is fired but where battles are fought for the minds of men.

"In the midst of all our rememberings and re-consideration of what happened 100 years ago, the reality is that we're still dealing with the aftermath of that war, the Second World War and the psychological damage of war," says Damian.

"Pat Barker's novel dealt with that legacy, and it's a legacy that is both destructive and creative from wartime, because it produced the poetry of Sassoon and Owen."

The first repertory show of the new season will be Harold Pinter's Betrayal, directed by associate director Juliet Forster, from October 3 to 18. Inspired by his own extramarital affair with Joan Bakewell, Pinter's love triangle drama unravels a backwards winding path of loss and discovery charting the ultimate betrayal of friend and husband.

"It's been on our list to look at for a while, and Juliet was keen to direct it, as we're interested in plays that are good actors' pieces and this one is very much character-driven," says Damian.

"It's about the complexity of relationships, and though it's describing the 1960s, it remains a very modern play and hasn't dated at all."

Theatre Royal company-in-residence Pilot Theatre team up with Derby Playhouse and the Theatre Royal Stratford East for Roy Williams's new version of Sophocles's Greek tragedy, Antigone, running in York from October 21 to 25.

"Its story of loyalty, truth and one person standing up against the rules will sit well in a modern setting," says Damian. "It's not narrated and it's not trapped in the past. It's about war, relationships, love, sacrifice, family: all the great big things."

The Nottingham Playhouse and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse co-production of Matthew Spangler's The Kite Runner flies into the Theatre Royal from October 27 to November 1 with its haunting tale of one man’s journey to confront his past and find redemption.

"What stage adapatations do is take you back to the spirit of a book because they're more imaginative than films in their telling of the story," says Damian. "This production is directed by Giles Croft, who's a great director, and it's the first time we've had one of his shows here."

Damian will as ever be co-directing the Theatre Royal pantomime run from December 11 to January 31 before directing the last repertory show in the main house's present format: A View From The Bridge, Arthur Miller's portrait of a flawed hero tested by changing times, from February 13 to 28.

Tickets can be booked on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk