Light Falls at the Royal Exchange

Light Falls at Royal Exchange Theatre, City Centre, 24 October–16 November 2019, from £7.00 - Book now

Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom will say goodbye to the Royal Exchange with Light Falls, an extraordinary new play by Simon Stephens, featuring original music by Jarvis Cocker.

Described as ‘a powerful allegory to the North’, Frankcom and multi-award-winning writer, Stephens have taken a journey across the North of England to shape and develop their latest collaboration. This will be Frankcom’s final production at the Royal Exchange before she leaves for a new post as director of drama school LAMDA.

Professor of Scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University, Stephens is perhaps best known for his award-winning adaptation, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Stephens and Frankcom have previously collaborated on Blindsided, Punk Rock and On the Shore of the Wide World at the Royal Exchange.

Light Falls is an extraordinary new play by Simon Stephens, featuring original music by Jarvis Cocker.

In this powerful world premiere performance, a family is drawn back together following a single and unpredictable tragedy. With original music by Jarvis Cocker, Light Falls promises to be an intricate and perceptive study of people, places and all of those things which pull us closer together.

A woman wakes up next to a complete stranger. A married man flirts with two younger women. A student fights with his lover. A lone mother struggles to feed her baby.  And far away, one devastating event is about to change all their lives forever.

An intricate and perceptive study of people, places and all of those things which pull us closer together.

Connecting five relatives in five different English towns, from Blackpool to Durham, Light Falls is a play about life in the face of death. Exploring how our love survives us after we’ve gone – and about how family, community and kindness help us all pull through.