PILOT Theatre and York Theatre Royal are to tour Juliet Forster's acclaimed production of E M Forster’s short story The Machine Stops next year.

The world premiere was the first show to run in The Studio in May after the Theatre Royal's £6 million redevelopment and will return there from February 10 to 18 before touring until April 8.

English novelist, essayist, and social and literary critic E M Forster is best known for his novels A Passage To India and Howard’s End, but his sci-fi work The Machine Stops, published in 1909, is both prophetic and poignant in 2016 on account of Forster's chilling warning of the dangers of isolation, reliance on computer technology and the effects upon society. Its prescient notions that dominate our world today included televisual messages and the internet.

Directed by Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster, Neil Duffield’s adaptation of Forster’s chilling story explores our increasingly intricate and complex relationship with technology.

In a dystopian world where humans have retreated far underground, Kuno alone questions their now total dependency on technology to live and communicate with each other, but in his struggle to break out, can he reach the Earth’s surface before the Machine stops?

Esther Richardson, Pilot Theatre’s artistic director and joint chief executive, says of the forthcoming tour: "Pilot are delighted to have the opportunity to take this fantastic show back out on the road. After such a successful run, earlier this year, we're excited to take The Machine Stops on a longer tour and give as many people as possible the chance to see it.”

York Press:

Caroline Gruber, as Vashti, in Juliet Forster's 2016 production of The Machine Stops. Picture: Ben Bentley

The production is designed by Rhys Jarman, with lighting by Tom Smith and movement by Philippa Vafadari, who also worked on Brideshead Revisited and The Legend Of King Arthur at the Theatre Royal. Casting will be announced in the coming months.

Electronic music pioneer John Foxx, the original lead singer of Ultravox, composed the play's soundtrack in tandem with analogue specialist Benge and it now forms much of the music on the new John Foxx And The Maths album, The Machine, set for release on February 10 next year on the Metamatic Records label.

Foxx and Benge, his partner in The Maths, came up with an eerily atmospheric, anxious set of sounds for the 2016 production, created entirely on old analogue synthesisers and drum machines. Their dystopian science-fiction themes will be issued on CD, as well as digital stream, on the same day that next year's touring production opens, and will feature artwork by Jonathan Barnbrook, whose credits include designs for David Bowie's last two studio albums, 2013's The Next Day and last January's Blackstar.

After York, The Machine Stops will tour to Nottingham, Letchworth, London, Bury St Edmunds, Colchester, Doncaster, Huddersfield, Newcastle and Coventry, as well as visiting Teatro Giovanni Testori in Forli, Italy in late-February. Tickets for the Theatre Royal run are on sale on 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the box office.