Outlander Star To Feature in New Wimbledon Theatre's Spring Season


John Bell makes his stage debut in the Studio Space

John Bell is appearing in The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me
John Bell is appearing in The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me

November 22, 2021

New Wimbledon Theatre have announced what they are planning for the Spring Season in the Studio Space.

This intimate 80-seater venue at the back of the main theatre and, legend has it, in a former life as a ballroom, Fred and Adele Astaire danced there.

Next year it will host a range of productions including a limited run of David Drake’s The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me starring John Bell in his stage debut. John has featured in the hit Amazon Prime series Outlander. Following that there will be The Thelmas’ Ladykiller which received rave reviews and sold out shows at Edinburgh Fringe 2018 and Vault Festival 2019 and award-winning company Arrows and Traps’ new shows HOLST and PAYNE.

The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me runs from 3 – 26 February 2022. The multi award winning Off-Broadway hit that Varity Magazine called ‘’Theatre Par Excellence & Not to be missed’’ is being performed in London for the first time.

The play premiered at New York's Perry Street Theater, and played for a full year off-Broadway, making it one of the longest running solo shows in New York. David Drake won several awards for his writing and performance of The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, including an Obie Award for performance in 1993, and two Dramalogue Awards in the same year. He was also nominated for a Lambda Literary Award the following year.

It is the coming of age story of a young gay actor, his call to gay pride and activism in New York during the onset of HIV/AIDS in the 80s.

Broken up into a series of stories, Drake abstractly documents a gay man's journey of self-discovery. From the late-night club crawl to the buff-bunny gyms, from the threat of anti-gay violence to the place where condemnation, compromises and closets are a thing of the past, the play exposes the sexual, spiritual, and political yearnings at the heart of gay America shared by a whole generation of gay men and women.

Director Steven Dexter, says “It’s a touching and funny play that remind us all how important theatre is, especially after the tough few years our industry has had.”

Ladykiller is being performed from 17 – 18 March 2022. A hotel room, a chambermaid and a dead woman. It’s not what it looks like, really, it’s not. It was self-defence… and anyway, the woman was asking for it. The chambermaid considers herself to be a pretty normal person; she reads books. She pretended to read the party manifestos at the General Election. She’s even read The Psychopath Test and she’s pretty sure she’s not one so… A blood-soaked morality tale about victimhood, power and flipping the gender rule book on psychopathy. Charting one woman’s journey from violent oppression to bloody revolution, it is ajet-black comedy for the age of the gig economy.

Ladykiller is being performed from 17 – 18 March 2022
Ladykiller is being performed from 17 – 18 March 2022

From 12 – 23 April 2022 sees the arrival of HOLST and PAYNE and The Dyer’s Hand Season. Two interlinking plays are told on alternating nights by a single cast and produced by Arrows & Traps Theatre.

They tell the story of the man many believe is England's greatest modern composer, Gustav Holst - covering his life as a music teacher and composer of the iconic Planets Suite. "HOLST" uncovers the man behind the music, as we follow Gustav as he champions for Arts for All, bringing music and musicianship to both women and the working classes. Incorporating music from the famous Planets Suite, "HOLST" is a story about the power of music and determination.

Picking up the story in "HOLST" five years later, "PAYNE" follows one of Holst's students - Cecilia Payne - as she begins her ground-breaking work in astronomy at Harvard Observatory in 1922. Following the course of her adult life, "PAYNE" is the story of one of England's most under-appreciated scientific pioneers, telling of about one woman's love affair with the stars.

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