Emma Rice announces final Winter Season at Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

New musical opens Rice's final season.

Current Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Emma Rice has announced details of her final winter season at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse which is called The Winter Selection.

Announcing the season, Rice commented: "I've always seen the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse as a little box of treats, encouraging the primal need to tell and hear stories and inviting tales and magic to unfurl beneath the flicker of the candles. For my final season as Artistic Director at the Globe, I knew I wanted to present the most delicious, unique and beautiful box of delights."

The season begins with a new musical directed and written by Rice titled Romantics Anonymous. Featuring book by Rice, lyrics by Christopher Dimond, and music by Michael Kooman it is presented by special arrangement with Radio Mouse Entertainment and runs from 20 October to 6 January 2018 with an official opening on 27 October.

Adapted from the French-Belgian film 'Les Émotifs Anonymes' written by Jean-Pierre Améris and Philippe Blasband, the musical follows Angélique, a gifted chocolate maker inhibited by social anxiety, and Jean-René, the awkward boss of a struggling chocolate factory, in an unusual and tender love story about finding the courage to be happy. Romantics Anonymous will be the final new production directed by Emma Rice as Artistic Director of the Globe.

This will be followed by The Secret Theatre, a new play by Anders Lustgarten, directed by Matthew Dunster which runs from 16 November to 16 December 2017 with an official opening on 22 November. "As the nation's relationship with Europe deteriorates and civil unrest grows, Elizabeth I's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, adopts extreme tactics to keep his queen and country safe. Set in a world of espionage, double-crossing and blackmail, The Secret Theatre asks what we are prepared to sacrifice to ensure our safety."

Apocalypse Meow: Crisis is Born, an alternative Christmas show from post-post-modern cabaret sensation Meow Meow runs from 20 to 31 December 2017. "Following her appearance in Emma Rice's A Midsummer Night's Dream last summer, the post-post-modern cabaret sensation brings her hilarious and heart-wrenching festive extravaganza to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. This untraditional Christmas show will combine moments of hare-brained hijinks with poignant and tender reflections on loneliness, lost dreams and the apocalypse."

Looking into 2018, Caroline Byrne will direct Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well from 11 January to 3 March 2018 with an official opening on 17 January.

In a co-production with Northern Broadsides, Barrie Rutter will direct The Captive Queen, a re-imagining of John Dryden's Restoration drama Aureng-zebe from 2 February to 4 March 2018 with an official opening on 7 February. Set in the woollen mills of the North of England in the late 20th century it retains a flavour of Dryden's original Mughal Indian setting. "An ageing Emperor and his Governor rage at the loss of their youth and beauty, whilst two fratricidal sons are spurred from victory in war to the warfare of love. All four are besotted with the same captive queen."

The final productions will include Vivaldi's The Four Seasons - a re-imagining created by Gyre & Gimble's master puppeteers newly arranged for a quintet of London's finest musicians which runs from 9 March to 21 April 2018 with an official opening on 16 March and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Matchgirl and Other Happier Tales, adapted and directed by Emma Rice, in co-production with Bristol Old Vic running from 27 March to 21 April 2018.

Tickets for the Winter Season are on public sale 19 June.