Lyric's Main Auditorium Reopens After Major Facelift
Artistic Director Sean Holmes' final season opens with othellomacbeth
The Lyric Hammersmith's newly refurbished main house auditorium has reopened for its autumn season - the final season for Artistic Director Sean Holmes, who is bowing out this month.
The Victorian auditorium closed during summer for its first full refurbishment in almost 40 years.
Last renovated in 1979, the 550 seat auditorium underwent ceiling repairs, redecoration and repacement of seats and carpets.
The Lyric’s smaller studio space has also been modernised as part of the refurbishment, with the theatre saying work on both spaces aimed to maintain safety and improve accessibility and audience comfort, as well as preserve the heritage of the building.
The season has begun with othellomacbeth, an audacious condensed staging of two of Shakespeare’s most brutal and poetic plays. You can find out more about this production and book tickets here.
It is followed from 17 November by this year's pantomime, Dick Whittington. It runs until 6 January and includes a special 10 Year Celebratory Event at The Lyric on 7 December. Find out more and book tickets here.
Sean, pictured above, is leaving after almost a decade as Artistic Director at The Lyric. He says: "When you first start a job you feel a bit of a fake and feel you’ve been over promoted and I hoped that didn’t prove to be the case.
"And now here almost ten years later with this brand-new building, the auditorium refurbished and the Lyric panto become a west London institution I feel like it is a very good time to leave and I’m proud of what we’ve managed to do here."
Since January 2009, Sean has directed 22 shows, including Blasted, which won an Oliver Award in 2011, and Ghost Stories, which the British theatre director describes as ‘an insane gamble’ as they had no script to start with, but it turned into one of his most successful productions.
After being made into a successful film, a new production Ghost Stories will be back onstage at the Lyric as part of its spring season.
Sean says one of his personal favourites was the 2015 production of Bugsy Malone, which marked the reopening of the theatre after a £20million expansion and refurbishment.
"It was the biggest show we’d ever done at the Lyric with 21 people on stage," he says. "It just felt the perfect show to re-open the new Lyric with all these new spaces dedicated to working with young people. That mixture of young people on stage, artistic excellence and real accessibility was the thing I’d always hoped for the Lyric and that show encapsulated it all."
Last month, the Lyric announced that Rachel O’Riordan, pictured above, will be the new Artistic Director from February next year, joining Sian Alexander, the Lyric’s Executive Director and Joint Chief Executive since October 2015, to co-lead the theatre.
You can read the full story here.
October 12, 2018
