Edinburgh Preview: Les Dennis in Jigsy

Upstairs at the Gatehouse: 28/29 July only

Remember Ken Dodd? Tommy Cooper? Mick Miller? Jigsy does.

Over the last thirty years he’s worked with them all – and he’ll tell you the stories to prove it. From the laughs down the pub to the horror stories of when it goes wrong on stage, Jigsy was there – permanent pint in hand.

With sweat, smoke and failure clinging to his faded dinner jacket, he now works the dying Liverpool club circuit.This is Jigsy’s story: reliving the glamour and grit of his younger days, he now broods on the success he might have had. But despite it all he keeps on getting back up on stage.The audiences might be dwindling, but Jigsy always has a gag that sends them home laughing.

Tony Staveacre’s blisteringly funny new play stars Les Dennis.

www.jigsylive.co.uk.

Saturday 28th at 8.00pm. Sunday 29th July at 4.00pm. Tickets £14 (concs £10)

 

Overseas Writers: BBC Radio Playwriting Competition

The International Radio Playwriting Competition is run by the BBC World Service and the British Council, in partnership with Commonwealth Writers and is now in its 23rd year.

It is a competition for anyone resident outside Britain, to write a 53-minute radio drama for up to six characters.

There are two categories: one for writers with English as their first language and one for writers with English as their second language.

The two winners will come to London and see their play made into a full radio production, which will then be broadcast on the BBC World Service.

They will also each receive a £2,000 prize and there are certificates for runners-up.

The play must be in English, unpublished and must not have been previously produced in any medium.

Whether you’re experienced, new, or somewhere in between, BBC World Service want to hear from you.

Deadline: 31st July 2012

UK Premiere, The Coming Storm

19 – 23 June. At Battersea Arts Centre. Part of LIFT Festival

Employing devices from puppet theatre, song and naive dance, Forced Entertainment tell an epic story that (they say) is resolutely too big for the stage. In a style as inventive as it is absurd, wrong-headed theatrical tricks take their place alongside an increasingly preposterous narrative, and for the first time in the Forced Entertainment’s work, live music. This darkly comic and haunting tale promises to explode audience expectations.

www.forcedentertainment.com

 

 

Air-conditioned Finborough on a hot streak

“Events while guarding the Bofors gun,” is revived at the Finborough till 16 June

Latest productions at the Finborough Theatre in Earl’s Court are getting good reviews, which could make tickets for the small theatre even more difficult to get.

The main production at the moment is a well-regarded revival of the late John McGrath’s ‘Events while guarding the Bofors gun.” Directed by emerging director Robert Hastie, John McGrath’s depiction of young men coming to terms with a new, inhuman era of warfare is based on his own experience of National Service in the 1950s.

On Sundays and Mondays, the theatre is presenting Merrie England, a light opera from the early 1900’s.

More at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Pop-up open air venue for Shakespeare double bill

The Faction, winners of the Peter Brook Equity Ensemble Award 2011, are creating a pop-up open air venue in Brockwell Park near Brixton to present a new production of Othello and a revival of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Faction has taken over the copse in Brockwell Park to create an improvised auditorium underneath a canopy of trees – perfect for enjoying the summer evenings with a hamper of food, a picnic rug and a high quality Shakespearean production – or two.

Shakespeare’s enthralling tragedy of jealousy, prejudice and betrayal, Othello, is the first production to be directed by The Faction’s Associate Director Rachel Valentine-Smith. Nana Amoo-Gottfried and Elizabeth Twells make their debuts with the company as Othello and Desdemona.

The same company are cross-cast in Shakespeare’s comedy masterpiece A Midsummer Night’s Dream which closed its UK tour last year at the Theatre Royal Bath. Kate Sawyer recreates her critically acclaimed performance as Helena alongside Derval Mellett (Hippolyta / Titania) and Jonathan Plummer (Bottom / Egeus). The production is directed by The Faction’s Artistic Director Mark Leipacher.

The Faction is an ensemble interpreting classical texts with a contemporary aesthetic to engage and excite local, national and international audiences, building a permanent ensemble with a rolling repertoire.

For further information visit www.thefaction.org.uk

Sluts at the Finborough

World premiere for American Playwright, Joshua Conkel

As part of the Finborough Theatre’s Summer Season, acclaimed US playwright Joshua Conkel makes his UK debut with the world premiere of the darkly comic The Sluts of Sutton Drive.

Everybody wants a piece of Stephanie Schwartz. Her son’s demanding nuggets, her boyfriend wants her to wax and her best friend’s taking her to a stripping class. Now there’s a rapist on Sutton Drive, an obscene caller invading her home and a portal to hell beneath her sofa. How far must she go to make it all stop? And how far is too far?

This black comedy is by Joshua Conkel, “the most important queer playwright of his generation”

Arnold Wesker’s Denial, at the King’s Head, Islington

Directed by Fringe Report Award-Winner, Adam Spreadbury-Mather. On now

Arnold Wesker

Arnold Wesker, playwright, says this about the 2012 production of Denial at the King’s Head Theatre:

“One day someone from my past rang to tell me he had a story which he thought would made a good play: Something awful that had happened to his friends. I sighed. But within minutes of hearing what had happened to his friends I knew that this story was ‘speaking’ to me.”

“This material, about his friends’ daughter who had turned on them with dreadful, unfounded accusations of sexual abuse when she was a child was more than a story about a painful, domestic injustice; it was about the theme of manipulation – the therapist as manipulator.”

“I met the couple – a middleclass couple from North London – and taped many hours of their story. I never met ‘Valerie’, the therapist, but I read documents she’d written, and documents about her.  She is still practicing, and organises weekend conferences on the dubious topic of ‘recovered memories of child abuse’.”

More at www.kingsheadtheatre.com

The Pirate Project. Lucy Foster with Improbable, at the Oval House next week.

Fanciful stagings of the escapades of Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Ching Shih – swashbuckling female pirates of the past – combine with intimate stories of personal piracy in the performers’ own lives. See these bloodthirsty damsels out-sail, out-think, and out-fight every man on the high seas.

How did they do it? How does a slip of a girl subdue a ship of salty sea dogs? Could she still do it today? Has her 21st century counterpart got the guts to stick a dagger between her teeth, fire a broadside and make off with the booty?

In The Pirate Project three women set sail in search of their inner pirate. Expect sword fights, theatrical storms, cross dressing, and a certain amount of swagger.

Tue 15 May – Sat 2 Jun, 7:45pm
www.ovalhouse.com

Aspiring writer? Q+A with David Eldridge

BBC Writersroom are holding a special Q&A with writer David Eldridge at the Broadway Barking at 6:30pm on Thursday 24th May 2012.

David’s work includes Under the Blue Sky, Market Boy, The Knot of the Heart, The Stock Da’wa, In Basildon and the upcoming adaptation of Miss Julie for The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester.

David will be in conversation with Kate Rowland, BBC Creative Director of New Writing, about his writing career, and he will also answer questions from the audience.

Thursday 24th May 2012 6:30pm
The Broadway, Barking, IG11 7LS

Tickets are free. Please reserve your place by emailing writersroom.events@bbc.co.uk with ‘David Eldridge Q&A’ in the subject title and your full name in the email.

 

 

Until 12 May, Critically Acclaimed

In the Solitude of Cotton Fields

by Bernard-Marie Koltès, trans. Jeffrey Wainwright
Tristan Bates Theatre, Covent Garden
Tuesday-Saturday, 8pm & Sundays 4pm

French playwright Koltès’ seminal work of modern European theatre is an extraordinary duologue between two men who meet randomly on the street and who find themselves locked in a struggle between life and death.

British director Kimberley Sykes brings a physical, dynamic new approach to the text as the tension escalates between ‘Dealer’ and ‘Client’ as they engage in a war of words, wills and desires.

Produced by Europa Scenes, who are dedicated to promoting modern European playwriting.