Patrick Marber’s The Red Lion to Transfer to Trafalgar Studios

Marber's play is set in the dressing room of a semi-professional football club

Patrick Marber's play The Red Lion is set to transfer to Trafalgar Studios in London following a sold-out run at the Live Theatre in Newcastle.

The Red Lion is set in the dressing room of a semi-professional football team in the north east of England. The play first opened in the Dorfman at the National Theatre in 2015 and was Marber's first new work in almost a decade. It will run at Trafalgar Studios from 6 November to 2 December, with previews from 1 November.

Live Theatre artistic director Max Roberts directs the piece, and the cast will include  Stephen Tompkinson (Spamalot, West End), John Bowler (It Just Stopped, The Orange Tree and Dean Bone (Vera, ITV).

Set in the modern day, the piece is informed by Marber's personal experience with non-league football and follows two of the backroom staff whose lives have been changed by life either before or after Thatcher's England, whilst a young player is caught up in the middle.

On the show's transfer, Marber said: "To an extent is dramatising something about England; that there is one strain of thought which is about community, tolerance and belonging, and there is another which represents a whole counter trajectory about what England could or should be; that England is a business."

The production will be produced by Live Theatre and Trish Wadley, and has designs by Patrick Connellan.

Marber's most recent productions in London include Travesties at the Apollo starring Tom Hollander, and Don Juan in Soho, which starred David Tennant at the Wyndham's Theatre.

Later this month, Stockard Channing will open at the theatre in Alexi Kaye Campbell's Apologia, and a transfer of the Finborough Theatre's production of Late Company has just been announced.