Birmingham Repertory Theatre is excited to mark the opening of its Autumn Season with a unique theatrical event – The Covid-19 Variations: A Piano Drama on Fri 27 and Sat 28 August 2021.
Directed by The REP’s Artistic Director, double Olivier Award winner Sean Foley, The Covid-19 Variations: A Piano Drama is a unique and outrageously funny film and concert in one that stars everyone from Donald Trump and Elton John to Kanye West and even the Royal Family - because everyone has lived through Covid.
The entertaining take on the last 18 months has been written by Birmingham-born Richard Thomas, an Olivier Award winning composer, lyricist and Artistic Associate of The REP who was inspired after having had Covid twice. He shared his experience of being in the grip of the disease for fellow Birmingham born concert pianist Philip Fisher who was extremely ill with Covid in New York in the first days of lockdown.
Philip recovered and played the piece in an empty auditorium on Long Island, a recording of which found its way to BAFTA and multi-Award winning contemporary artist Alison Jackson. She in turn was inspired to create 19 short films for each of the Covid-19 Variations, drawn from her world of fake news, alternative facts, and celebrity lookalikes, and commemorating life in the time of Covid.
Richard Thomas’s Covid-19 Variations was originally commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum New York. Alison Jackson’s film has been specially created for this event.
This special event will be performed live on a concert grand by Philip Edward Fisher to open the REP’s 50th Anniversary Season.
Tickets are £17:50, including a drink, and priority booking opens today, Tues 13 July at birmingham-rep.co.uk. General booking opens Fri 16 July.
Each performance will be followed by an ‘In Conversation’ discussion with Alison Jackson, Richard Thomas, Philip Edward Fisher, Sean Foley and the audience.
In line with current Government regulations, The REP continues to take a number of carefully managed steps and precautions to help audiences feel safe and enjoy their chosen performance. The theatre has introduced a series of new safety measures such as socially distanced seating, hand sanitising stations, temperature checks and additional cleaning. More information can be found at birmingham-rep.co.uk.
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MEDIA CONTACT
For more information and interview requests please contact Zeenat Moosa Hassan, Senior Press and Marketing Officer on zeenat.moosa@birmingham-rep.co.uk or 07857 529 864.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Birmingham Repertory Theatre is the only producing theatre in the UK’s Second City.
The oldest building-based theatre company in the UK, The REP has an unparalleled pioneering history and has been at the forefront of theatre in this country for over 100 years. It is a registered charity (number 223660).
The REP’s mission is to create artistically ambitious popular theatre for, by and with the people of Birmingham and the wider world.
The commissioning and production of new work lies at the core of The REP’s programme and over the last 15 years, the company has produced more than 130 new plays. As well as presenting over 60 productions on its three stages every year, the theatre tours its productions nationally and internationally.
The REP’s acclaimed learning and outreach programme is one of the largest and most diverse of any arts organisation in the country. Every year we have over 70,000 contacts with young people and adults in the community on projects from drama or writing workshops to large-scale productions. The REP is also committed to nurturing new talent through its youth theatre groups, and it offers training for early career writers, directors, and artists through its ground-breaking REP Foundry theatre maker’s programme.
Many of The REP’s productions go on to have lives beyond Birmingham. Recent tours and transfers include The Lovely Bones, Brief Encounter, Nativity! The Musical, What Shadows, LOVE, The Winslow Boy, The Government Inspector, Of Mice and Men, Anita and Me, Penguins and The King’s Speech. The theatre’s long-running production of The Snowman celebrated its 25th anniversary as well as its 22nd consecutive season at London's Peacock Theatre in 2019.
Richard Thomas is the Olivier award-winning creator/composer of Jerry Springer – The Opera (National Theatre, West End, Carnegie Hall, BBC2, Sydney Opera House, and Off-Broadway). He wrote book and lyrics for hit opera, Anna Nicole (Royal Opera House, BAM New York, BBC 2, Nuremberg, and Dortmund). West End credits also include lyrics for Made in Dagenham (Adelphi Theatre) music and lyrics for the dance show, Shoes (Sadlers Wells, West End).
Television credits include Kombat Opera Presents… Five award-winning half hour comic musicals produced for BBC2, which won two Rose D’OR Internationals TV awards. Recently he has co-written all songs for two seasons of The Tracey Ullman Show (BBC1, HBO, twice-Emmy nominated); adapted lyrics for Lehar’s The Merry Widow ENO Coliseum) and composer lyricist for National Theatre of Scotland and BOP’s multi award-winning My Left Right Foot, The Musical (Edinburgh Festival, Shizuoka World Theatre Festival), the Divine Miss Jayde at the Soho theatre and Jonny Woo’s All Start Brexit Cabaret (Edinburgh and ENO Coliseum, Soho theatre). Richard started out in comedy in a double act touring nationally and internationally and working as composer/ music director for Harry Hill (national tour) Stewart Lee and Richard Herring (two BBC2 series and national tour) Frank Skinner (five seasons BBC1, ITV), Simon Munnery (BBC2 Series Attention, Scum) and Robert Newman (national tour). In lockdown Richard wrote a piano piece for the Guggenheim NYC, The Covid-19 Variations and is currently composing a series of solo musicals; Singing Heads for New Group in New York; a new musical about art with one of UK’s most famous artists, Rock Bottom- the AA Musical an addiction musical for the Young Vic and Birmingham Repetory Theatre and a new musical about ART!.
Alison Jackson is a contemporary BAFTA and multi award winning artist who explores the cult of celebrity – an extraordinary phenomenon created by the media, publicity industries and the public figures themselves. Her work raises questions about current fake news and alternative facts, and makes convincingly realistic work about celebrities doing things in private using cleverly styled lookalikes. Likeness becomes real, and fantasy touches on the believable.
She creates scenarios we have all imagined but never seen before. Jackson explores the media construction of celebrity and whether we can believe what we see when we live in a mediated world of screens, imagery and internet. She comments on our voyeurism, on the power and seductive nature of imagery, and on our need to believe, and challenges those preconceptions. In 2019 Jackson founded and launched a photography competition called A Day in Your Life, aimed at discovering young talent and budding photographers, from disadvantaged backgrounds, all minority groups, people with disabilities, and anyone who hasn’t had a chance to showcase their talent yet.
Jackson mentors young people and is an Member of the Alumni Council for The Royal College of Art; Trustee of Chelsea Art Theatre ; and Ambassador for the Spinal Injuries Association. Jackson supports a number of charities, including MacMillan Cancer Support, Marie-Curie, and Jeans for Genes Day, Cancer Research UK, amongst others.
Pianist Philip Edward Fisher is widely recognized as a unique performer of refined style and exceptional versatility. International tours as a prolific soloist and ensemble musician have taken Mr. Fisher across his native United Kingdom to Italy, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Kenya, Zimbabwe, the Ukraine, and United States.
2002 marked his New York debut at Alice Tully Hall, performing Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto under the baton of Maestro Larry Rachleff. Mr. Fisher has also appeared in-concert at Merkin Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, and his United Kingdom credits include performances at the Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre and Royal Festival Hall in London, Usher Hall in Edinburgh, the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, and Symphony Hall in Birmingham. He has performed with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Tampere Philharmonic, the Toledo Symphony and the Juilliard Symphony, working with Conductors Hannu Lintu, John Axelrod, James Lowe, Larry Rachleff and Giordono Bellincampi.
As chamber musician, he has worked with renowned performers and ensembles such as The Brodsky Quartet, tenor Robert White, pianist Sara Buechner, and violinists Elmar Oliviera, Philippe Graffin and Augustin Hadelich. Mr. Fisher studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the Juilliard School. In 2001, he received the prestigious Julius Isserlis Award from the Royal Philharmonic Society of London. His debut solo disc with the NAXOS label, Handel's Keyboard Suites Vol. 1, was released in early 2010 to great critical acclaim and hit the US Classical Billboard Charts within its first week. His recent release on the Chandos label, Piano Works by the Mighty Handful, was featured on Classic FM as John Suchet's "Album of the Week", as "Classical Album of the Week" in The Telegraph, and has been nominated in the "Best Solo Instrumental Album" category of the International Classical Music Awards 2012.
Sean Foley is an actor, writer and director - a double Olivier Award winner and Tony nominee. He has also, uniquely, been personally nominated in the in the acting, writing and directing categories. Of the 14 West End productions, he has been a lead creative on - as co-writer/star, writer/director, or director - 8 have been Olivier nominated. Theatre credits include: the Olivier Award nominated The Upstart Crow, starring David Mitchell, (director, Gielgud); The Man In The White Suit, (as writer/director, Wyndhams); his Olivier Award winning production of Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, (Duke of Yorks); Olivier Award nominated The Miser, (as co-writer and director, Garrick Theatre); The Painkiller, starring Kenneth Branagh and Rob Brydon, in Kenneth Branagh’s West End season, (as adaptor/director Garrick Theatre); the 5 times Olivier nominated The Ladykillers, starring Peter Capaldi, (including Best Director, and Whatsonstage Award for Best New Comedy, Gielgud); the Olivier nominated, Arturo Brachetti: Change, (as writer/director, Garrick); the Olivier Award winning Do You Come Here Often? (as co-writer and actor, Vaudeville); the Olivier Award winning The Play What I Wrote, (as co-writer and actor - further jointly nominated as Best Actor, Wyndham’s. The play was also Tony Award nominated on its Broadway transfer). The Olivier Award nominated, Ducktastic, (as co-writer and actor, Albery).
Further directing work includes: The Dresser, (Duke of York’s); Joan Rivers: A Work In Progress, (Leicester Square); The Walworth Farce, with Brendan, Domhnall and Briain Gleeson, Olympia Theatre, Dublin; his RSC debut, adapting and directing Thomas Middleton’s A Mad World My Masters, (Swan Theatre, Stratford, and Barbican); Harry Hill and Steve Brown’s, I Can’t Sing! at The London Palladium, starring Cynthia Erivo; Present Laughter, The Critic, and The Real Inspector Hound, (Chichester Festival Theatre); Joe Orton’s What The Butler Saw, (Vaudeville); Ben Hur, (Watermill); Pinter’s People, (Theatre Royal, Haymarket); as writer only, his new adaptation of Eugene Ionesco’s Amedee, or How To Get Rid Of It, debuted at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. As co-artistic director of the right size, he created, co-wrote and starred in ten original stage comedies 1990 to 2000.
The company played in over 25 countries around the world, winning many international awards. As an actor: Hamlet, starring Tom Hiddleston and directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh,(RADA); Mister Puntila and his Man Matti, (Traverse, Almeida, Albery); I Am Shakespeare, (Chichester); Hysteria, (Birmingham Rep); Wild West, (2 series, BBC1); Brass Eye, People Like Us, (C4); The Fitz, (BBC 2); The Harry Hill Film; All Is True; and as the lead in the C4/RTE produced Samuel Beckett short, Act Without Words 1. His feature film directing debut, Mindhorn, written by and starring Julian Barratt & Simon Farnaby, debuted at the London Film Festival and won the London Film Comedy Award for Best First Feature. TV directing includes episodes of SKY Studios’s anthology series, Urban Myths: Marilyn and Billy, starring Gemma Arterton; and, Diana and Freddy, starring Sophie Rundle. Sean was appointed as the new Artistic Director of The REP in early 2020.
