Multi-award-winning director Emma Rice brings her unique, exuberantly impish vision to Angela Carter’s great last novel in this brand-new theatre production. A big, bawdy tangle of theatrical joy and heartbreak, Wise Children is a celebration of show business, family, forgiveness and hope, with a generous dash of Shakespeare, scandal and mischief, taking the audience on a rollercoaster ride of emotion.

In Brixton, Nora and Dora Chance - twin chorus girls born and bred south of the river – are celebrating their 75th birthday. Over the river in Chelsea, their father - and greatest actor of his generation - Melchior Hazard turns 100 on the same day. As does his twin brother Peregrine. If, in fact, he’s still alive. And if, in truth, Melchior is their real father after all...

Performed by a spectacular ensemble cast, this all-singing and dancing show opened to a raft of 4 and 5-star reviews at London’s Old Vic in 2018. Adapted and directed by Emma Rice, the former Artistic Director of Kneehigh and Shakespeare’s Globe, it was filmed for the cinema screen at York Theatre Royal and is ‘pure, unadulterated theatre.’ (★★★★★ Broadway World)

ADAPTED AND DIRECTED FOR THE STAGE BY EMMA RICE
BASED ON THE BOOK BY ANGELA CARTER

RUNNING TIME 150 MINUTES | ONE INTERVAL | BBFC CERT 15

An Old Vic and Wise Children production, co-produced by the Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Oxford Playhouse and York Theatre Royal

★★★★★
‘Fantastic. Life-enhancing, brilliantly uninhibited, all-singing and dancing... Stars? I’m not sure why you would stop at five.’ The Observer

★★★★★
‘It's pure, unadulterated theatre with an airtight company, subject, direction, and production. Rice not only blind-casts the whole piece, but single-handedly gives a masterclass on how to play with gender.’ Broadway World

★★★★
‘An explosion of theatrical glee’ The Times

★★★★
‘It is a spectacular show, distilling the carnivalesque spirit of the book... Rice’s relaunch is a splashy one, celebrating the sheer razzle-dazzle of a life in theatre.’ The Guardian

★★★★
‘One huge love letter to theatre’ The Stage

★★★★
‘Glorious. It’s great to be back on Planet Rice’ Time Out

★★★★
‘An exuberant celebration of theatre’ Financial Times

★★★★
‘Emma Rice does justice to the verve and racy humour of Carter’s writing… tinged with melancholy yet joyous and inventive.’ Evening Standard

★★★★
‘Bonkers but brilliant, a very English Rice pudding’ Daily Mail

★★★★
‘It’s impossible not to be enchanted’ Radio Times

★★★★
‘Rice honours perfectly the dark enchantments of Carter’s imagination with this carnival-esque tribute to theatre as a substitute family.’ Metro