The Old Vic Theatre has announced that it will be playing Future Conditional, the new production from director Matthew Warchus, in Autumn 2015, bringing the ins and outs of the British school system to the West End stage. With Rob Brydon confirmed to star and an unconventional slant on education it’s starting off from a new stand-point, but as you’d expect with anything to do with the Welsh comedian, there’s going to be a fair few laughs in the new play.
The play will be opening on the 1st September 2015 with a relatively short run of a little over a month until the 3rd October 2015. Ticket prices are variable, with £10, £15, £20, £30, £35 and £45 tickets available for the production. Performance will take place at 7.30pm, Monday to Friday, with Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 2.30pm (excluding Wednesday the 2nd, Saturday the 5th and Wednesday the 9th September 2015. For the first five performances, half of the tickets will be available at just £10, thanks to PwC’s £10 Previews, so you might want to get in on the action early to get a bargain.
The story has been written by playwright, Tamsin Oglesby, taking a fresh look at the impact of schooling on children, families, teachers and experts. The British education system gets a lot of press and it’s usually for the wrong reasons, so it’s easy to see why Tamsin decided to write about it in Future Conditional, but this is added to by the fact that she’s still in thick of it herself with her eight year old son providing the perfect insight into the trials and tribulations of it all.
A number of different characters will take centre stage in the production, covering as many different angles as possible, taking in the topic from the perspective of parents, teachers and students. Of the latter, a big part of the story focuses on Alia, a young and smart Pakistani refugee who has recently been taken on as a part of the British Education Board. She has a big idea to reshape schools in the UK to make them more competitive in the world education league tables, but she’s got the challenging of persuading the Board to take a schoolgirl seriously to content with before she can make it a reality.
In addition to Rob Brydon’s starring role, the cast of Future Conditional is a huge collection of bright young faces. It’s a pretty lengthy list that includes Matthew Aubrey, Louisa Beadel, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Alex Clatworthy, Peta Cornish, Natasha Cottriall, Amy Dawson, Jennifer English, Sam Jenkins-Shaw, Natalie Klamar, Carla Langley, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Sofia Stuart and Eleanor Sutton.
In writing the play, Tamsin Oglesby got a chance to explore the frustrations she’s experienced as a mother getting to grips with an intense school system. She describes the play as being about how eduction “defines and divides us as a society”, which gives a pretty big indication of the importance and concern she levies in the direction of schooling in general. She also expects the audience “to laugh, to cry, to think” while watching it, so you should probably expect a pretty cathartic comedy of a play.
Director, Matthew Warchus, who worked with Oglesby for a few years on the development of Future Conditional, kick starts his first season as the artistic director of The Old Vic theatre with the play. He’s no stranger to serious West End drama and entertainment, having directed everything from Hamlet to Ghost: The Musical, but with recent movie Pride, he’s also shown that he can bring together comedy and drama. Taking over from Kevin Spacey as artistic director was always going to be a tall order, but he’s certainly got the experience to back it up, so it could be an early shout for award nominations.
