Merit at The Finborough by Alexandra Wood explores the unravelling relationship between a mother and daughter during the financial crash in 2013 Spain. A fast paced two-hander, the play confronts the morality of ambition, the nature of altruism and how success affects our responsibilities to family and friends.
Following the success of last year’s production of Obama-ology, multi-award-winning African-American playwright Aurin Squire returns to the Finborough Theatre with another world premiere – Don’t Smoke In Bed, opening 6 March 2016. Don’t Smoke In Bed is a exploration of social and racial perception in contemporary America. Jamaican-American Richard and White-American Sheryl are starting a family together. When they agree to a series of ‘bedroom interviews’, they believe that their interracial relationship is the focus of the article. As both play up to what they believe are the expectations of the interviewer, they embark on a journey that challenges their relationship to the core as the barriers between psychological and social, sexual and political, public and private, melt and dissolve. Writer Aurin Squire’s play Obama-ology received its world premiere at the 2014, and was subsequently produced at RADA. Squire is a New York journalist and playwright who graduated from The … Read more
Weald is a very satisfying play, a compelling examination of the impact that changing circumstances may have on our sense of self. This is achieved via the developing character arcs of two men at very different stages in their lives, yet both shaped by doubts about their future. The two excellent central performances, coupled with Daniel Foxsmith’s intelligent script, makes for an enriching theatrical experience.
The London premiere of award-winning playwright Alexandra Wood’s new play Merit kicks off the Finborough Theatre’s spring season with a four week run from 1 March. Set in Spain in 2013, Merit explores what people will be driven to during times of financial chaos, when bankers are getting filthy rich whilst others are left unable to support their families. Wood’s previous plays include The Human Ear (Paines Plough and UK tour), Man to Man (Wales Millennium Centre), Ages (Old Vic New Voices), The Initiate (Paines Plough – winner of a Scotsman Fringe First), The Empty Quarter (Hampstead Theatre) and the radio play Twelve Years (BBC Radio 4). She is a past winner of the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright and was the Big Room Playwright-in-Residence at Paines Plough in 2013. Director Tom Littler returns to the Finborough Theatre having achieved a record seven OffWestEnd Award nominations last year … Read more
The Finborough Theatre has announced that it will present Horniman’s Choice in September 2015 bringing together four one act plays from the ‘Manchester School’ of playwrights. “If Lancashire playwrights will send their plays to me I shall pledge myself to read them through. Let them not write as one dramatist does, about Countesses and Duchesses and society existing in imaginations, but about their friends and enemies – about real life.” – Annie Horniman These plays by Harold Brighouse, Stanley Houghton and Allan Monkhouse, were all originally championed by Annie Horniman, owner of the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, the first repertory theatre in Britain. The four plays chosen are:- THE PRICE OF COAL by Harold Brighouse 1909. The mines. Collier Jack Tyldesley heads off at 5.30am for another day’s hard graft at the coalface. His lover, Mary Bradshaw, has promised to answer his marriage proposal when he returns home, but Jack’s mother … Read more
From the moment Alastair Brookshaw’s astonishing S.L. Jacobowsky, alone on stage, starts the narrative running, the audience is hooked, completely aware that Southerland has created something quite remarkable in the tiny Finborough Theatre space, and absolutely determined not to interrupt a second of it. An absolute, unqualified, treat.
Alastair Brookshaw, Nick Kyle and Zoë Doano are to head the cast for the European première of Jerry Herman’s 1979 Broadway musical, The Grand Tour, directed by Thom Southerland, at the Finborough Theatre as part of the 20 Premières Season. The Grand Tour will run for a strictly limited eight-week season from Thursday 1 January to Saturday 21 February, 2015. France, 1940. Jacobowsky, a Polish Jewish intellectual, has been one step ahead of the Nazis for years. Stjerbinsky, an aristocrat, anti semitic Polish colonel is desperately trying to get to England. Jacobowsky has purchased a car he doesn’t know how to drive. The Colonel knows how to drive, but has no car. When the two meet at a Paris hotel, they agree to join forces in order to escape the approaching Nazis. Together with the Colonel’s girlfriend, Marianne, they begin their perilous journey on the road to freedom. Featuring one … Read more
Nona Shepphard’s achievement here is really quite astonishing: this is a sensational premiere of a new work. Why it is not playing at the National is one of life’s mysteries.
