LITMIR.BIZ

Dead frogs and domestic savagery…Deep in the English countryside a son returns home after an eight-year absence. An arsonist teenager, a small village, and a thatcher who hates Thatcher collide under the looming presence of a defunct currency-paper mill. Bud writes a twisted love song to an impoverished rural Britain. A darkly comic new drama by one of the UK’s most exciting new writing talents.‘Brennan’s coming of age as a truly significant voice in modern theatre’ - Broadway Baby ‘Drama of epic proportions’ – Metro ‘Brennan’s writing is sharply observed, economic and tightly plotted… this feels rather like watching Arthur Miller transported to the English countryside.’ – WhatsOnStage.com

Подробнее

Shirley is a teenage boy with a girl’s name, growing up in suburbia and feeling like the weirdest kid in the school. Nothing makes much sense to him, and his heart belongs to a classmate who barely knows he exists. Wound Man is an unconventional superhero, sprung from the pages of a medieval medical textbook, with an alarming assortment of weapons sticking out from every part of his body. Wound Man has just moved into a house on Shirley’s street – and he happens to have a vacancy for a teenage sidekick… A funny and touching story by Chris Goode about two unlikely friends and the adventures they share.‘A simple, unaffected piece of storytelling… There is something so unguarded, almost childlike, about this show that you can't help but fall in love with it’ 4 stars – Guardian ‘told with humour and bags of charm… The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley tells a familiar tale in a refreshing and imaginative way to leave us amused and moved.’ 4 stars – What’s On Stage

Подробнее

Howard Barker's alter-ego Eduardo Houth first materialised as the photographer of publicity images for Barker's theatre company The Wrestling School, one of many fictional identities assumed by the playwright to screen a range of his activities, including set and costume design.Writing of himself in the third person and in the historic tense, Barker/Houth achieves a fluency and an uncommon measure of objectivity, though objectivity is scarcely the sole intention. The result is a unique exercise in self-description, partisan but without the shrill self-justification so common in a mere autobiography. Barker/Houth's A Style and its Origins is very much a literary creation; it is also a totally original document and a rich history of the dramatist and his aesthetic.

Подробнее

A Disappearing Number takes as its starting point the story of one of the most mysterious and romantic mathematical collaborations of all time. Simultaneously a narrative and an enquiry, the production crosses three continents and several histories, to weave a provocative theatrical pattern about our relentless compulsion to understand.A man mourns the loss of his lover, a mathematician mourns her own fate. A businessman travels from Los Angeles to Chennai pursuing the future; a physicist in CERN looks for it too. The mathematician G.H. Hardy seeks to comprehend the ideas of the genius Srinivasa Ramanujan in the chilly English surroundings of Cambridge during the First World War. Ramanujan looks to create some of the most complex mathematical patterns of all time.Threaded through this pattern of stories and ideas are questions. About mathematics and beauty; imagination and the nature of infinity; about what is continuous and what is permanent; how we are attached to the past and how we affect the future; how we create and how we love.The book features an essay by Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford, and an introduction by Simon McBurney. The Complicité production was an astonishing success during its run at the Barbican, London in Spring 2007, winning The Evening Standard’s Best New Play Award 2007. Called ' Mesmerizing' by the New York Times, A Disappearing Number is a brilliant play, aided with original music composed by the award winning DJ, producer and writer Nitin Sawhney. A Disappearing Number was revived at the Novello Theatre, London in autumn 2010.‘There is a sense of deep connections being made, an apprehension of the underlying patterns of life, and one leaves the theatre feeling intellectually stimulated, emotionally stirred and spiritually refreshed. A Disappearing Number is a wonder and one I cannot recommend too highly.’ Charles Spencer – The Telegraph ‘Brilliant show… both mind-bending and heart-stopping. Conceived and directed by Simon McBurney who is easily, to my mind, the greatest creator of theatre in this country…. to the sum of great Complicite shows, A Disappearing Number is a noble addition.’ Paul Taylor – The Independent "…as with the earlier Mnemonic , the company display a rare capacity to take abstract concepts and invest them with strong emotion and embody them with virtuosic theatricality…. Even maths duffers will respond warmly to a show that confirms theatre's ability to make the sciences manifest. 4 stars’ Michael Billington – The Guardian

Подробнее

The King James Version of the Bible (KJV) is a foundation stone of the English language. The KJV was composed as a collective project and written to be spoken. Sixty-Six Books has been created, in the spirit of the original, in the same way. Pulpit to print; stage to page; mediated through many forms oral and written this is a work that has travelled to every continent of the globe. It has been shared as a melodic instrument of inspiration, illumination and mutual understanding; and it has also been wielded as a tool of colonial oppression.Contributors to Sixty-Six Books include: Kwame Kwei-Armah, Neil Bartlett, Caroline Bird, Yemisi Blake, Billy Bragg, Moira Buffini, Sam Burns, Suhayla El-Bushra, Anne Carson, Matt Charman, Brian Chikwava, Elinor Cook, Laura Dockrill, Carol Ann Duffy, Stella Duffy, David Edgar, Helen Edmundson, David Eldridge, Adam Foulds, Naomi Foyle, Salena Godden, Chris Goode, James Graham, Trevor Griffiths, Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, Nancy Harris, Daisy Hasan, DC Jackson, Jackie Kay, Luke Kennard, Maha Khan Philips, Deirdre Kinahan, Nancy Kricorian, Neil LaBute, Nick Laird, Mandla Langa, Toby Litt, Lachlan Mackinnon, Marks & Gran, Ian McHugh, Anne Michaels, Helen Mort, Kate Mosse, Andrew Motion, Paul Muldoon, Molly Naylor, Nick Payne, Wena Poon, Anya Reiss, Tim Rice, Michael Rosen, Amy Rosenthal, Kamila Shamsie, Owen Sheers, Christopher Shinn, Wole Soyinka, Jack Thorne, Enda Walsh, Zukiswa Wanner, Steve Waters, Rowan Williams, Jeanette Winterson, Anthony Weigh, Tom Wells and Roy Williams.

Подробнее

Nicholas Dromgoole has been a prominent and respected drama and dance critic for most of his adult life. Who better therefore to take the reader through the role of this often misunderstood animal?This concise guide to the role of the critic will surely prove to be a great addition to the bookshelves of all theatre lovers.‘A thoughtful and enlightening book…. Scholarly but accessible… there’s plenty for performing arts creators to think about’ – Susan Elkin, The Stage ‘Dromgoole carves a travelogue through a changing landscape of models of thought…gliding elegantly into postmodernism and inviting current critics to remember it’s the audience that dictates taste first and foremost, declaring that critics ought to be a humble breed of cultural operators.’ – Exuent Magazine

Подробнее

“The wild things they did with those tees. Some held together by wooden pins. Some strung to wear just once. Some of long thin detachable sleeves…”A T-shirt is something most people have. It is a common denominator like a pair of blue jeans or a pair of Converse All Stars. From Fringe First winner Inua Ellams, comes a new story about two foster brothers building a global t-shirt brand. On their journey from a market in Nigeria to a sweatshop in China, Matthew and Muhammed discover the consequences of success. The play tackles capitalism and exploitation, as well as sectarianism and homophobia in modern day Nigeria.

Подробнее

I’ve got a new law for you mate, it’s called survival of the fittest, it’s called fuck you we’re the Riot Club.In an oak-panelled room in Oxford, ten young bloods with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule. Members of an elite student dining society, the boys are bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and bloody good wine. But this isn’t the last huzzah: they’re planning a takeover. Welcome to the Riot Club.Laura Wade's depiction of wealth and privilege is savagely funny – Time Out London Disgracefully entertaining… there is much fun to be had at the expense of these posh characters as they bicker, get wasted and lament the awfulness of the working classes. **** – The Telegraph Wade deftly skewers the sense of entitlement that swirls like a sickly perfume around a certain kind of upper-class thug. Her characters seem to have everything, yet whinge relentlessly… Posh combines twisted humour with ripe excess and a cruelly precise topicality. For many it will leave a bitter taste in the mouth. But, as the characters say with lip-smacking approval, it’s savage. **** – London Evening Standard Wade has grasped a fundamental truth about British life… Her chief target is not just privileged toffs but the cosy network that really runs Britain… But, while Wade's play reminds us that many of the upper-class continue to enjoy the sound of broken glass, its success lies in harpooning the way power operates through a succession of nods and winks in our supposedly open, egalitarian society. **** – The Guardian

Подробнее

‘I walked in and she's sat in the coffin. In the middle of the living-room floor and she's – she's watching telly and laughing’Nobody can ignore the fact that Myra is dying but in the meantime life goes on. There are boilers to be fixed, cats to be fed and the perfect funeral to be planned. As a mother researches burial spots and bio-degradable coffins, her family are finally forced to communicate with her, and each other, as they face up to an unpredictable future. Laura Wade's beautifully poised family drama was first performed at Soho Theatre, London.‘Laura Wade’s play is a 90-minute masterpiece, a jewel, dark but translucent. It is a play of love, death and grief: the grief that is hardest to bear, because it begins before the loved one dies.’ – John Peter, Sunday Times * * * * *‘Wade’s original and beautifully observed play balances raw emotion with a deliciously delicate black humour.’ – Aleks Sierz, The Stage

Подробнее

From the streets of Paris to worldwide fame Edith Gassion (known to all as 'Piaf', the sparrow) continues to be remembered and revered for her exceptional voice and extraordinary, troubled life.In this new version of Piaf , Pam Gems has reworked her classic 1978 play, vividly capturing the glamour and squalor, the rise and fall of this complex, fragile and enigmatic performer.

Подробнее