The Barn Theatre in Cirencester have this week announced their full 2021 Reopening Season, which includes the 25th anniversary production of Marie Jones’ Olivier award-winning tragicomedy Stones in His Pockets (27 July to 22 August) and the world premiere of Simon Reade’s actor-musician adaptation of David Copperfield (28 September to 6 November) with the Christmas spectacle The Brothers Grimm Present: Cinderella running over the festive season (16 November 2021 to 2 January 2022).
The season will also see An Elephant in the Garden return to the Barn (31 August to 11 September) following its award-nominated digital run earlier this year. We thoroughly recommend catching this adaptation of the Michael Morpurgo children’s novel about a family (and an accompanying elephant) fleeing the Allied bombing towards the end of WWII. Check out our review of the digital production to find out more.
The Reopening Season also features the previously announced run of the Olivier Award-winning comedy Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense (15 June to 10 July), which opened this week following its run at The Theatre Chipping Norton. Unfortunately the performances from 17 to 19 June had to be postponed following a member of the show company receiving information that they had potentially been exposed to Covid-19 whilst not at the theatre. The Barn, which operates under strict safety protocols (and has had five successful indoor productions as well as an outdoor theatre festival without a single Covid-19 case) immediately took decisive, precautionary action for audience safety, postponing the remainder of the week’s performances until the entire company had received negative test results.
The Barn has also announced the return of BarnFest, following the success of the inaugural outdoor theatre festival in 2020. You can read all about our experiences at BarnFest 2020 here. Cast and creatives for the 2021 productions and further information on BarnFest 2021 will be announced in due course.
This expands the Barn’s outdoor offerings for the year which also includes the announced The Barn at Notgrove event, from 21 to 22 August, which will see the theatre team up with theatre company Scoot Theatre to take over the grounds of the Manor House at the Notgrove Estate for a weekend of family-friendly outdoor Shakespeare performances. This is another one which we highly recommend, having seen their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at BarnFest last year. We are also looking forward to seeing The Comedy of Errors during its tour of cricket grounds this summer.
Tickets for the 2021 reopening season are available for priority booking from 14 June at 11am, with general sale from 18 June at 12pm. Tickets for Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense and The Barn at Notgrove in association with Scoot Theatre are now on general sale at barntheatre.org.uk.