The Handmaid's Tale Tickets

Based on Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel, Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale plunges us into the Republic of Gilead, where women have been entirely stripped of their rights and freedoms.

The opera tells the story of a Handmaid given the name Offred, one of the fertile women forced to reproduce with Commanders of the Republic. This thought-provoking work magnifies the issues of state control and the fragility of freedom, as Offred wrestles with the daily terror of her reality.

With Danish composer Ruders’s score, with a libretto by Paul Bentley, influenced by minimalism, medieval chanting and gospel music, the dissonant brutality of Gilead is viscerally depicted in the opera’s music itself.

By: Poul Ruders
Director: Annilese Miskimmon
Cast list: Camille Cottin, Kate Lindsey, Emma Bell, Robert Hayward, Avery Amereau, Frederick Ballentine, Rhian Lois, Pumeza Matshikiza, Elin Pritchard, Madeleine Shaw, Alan Oke, Susan Bickley, John Findon
Set: Annemarie Woods
Costume: Annemarie Woods
Lighting: Paule Constable
Choreography: Imogen Knight
Sound: Yvonne Gilbert