24 February 2020
Newsdesk
The Playground Theatre has announced its early Summer season with three very different shows, traveling from ancient Greece, to 1940s America, to 1980s Paris. The season opens with Fragments, which pieces together a long-lost Euripides play from pieces of papyrus, followed by The Respectable Prostitute, where powerful people spread false truths for their personal ambition and closes with Blue Electric directed by Hugh Hudson, who directed the 1981 film Chariots of Fire.
The season starts with a brand-new play by Laura Swift and Russell Bender: a play within a play, Fragments (30 April – 16 May) contains enticing snippets of a lost play by Euripides. Looking at how archeologists and historians reconstruct the past, it also questions how we construct memories, stories and world views based on our perceptions and assumptions. Inspired by the vast collections of papyrus stored in museums around the world, Fragments starts with two archeologists tending to scraps of an ancient Greek manuscript in the light of an overhead projector, piecing together a lost masterpiece. Presented by Potential Difference in Association with The Playground Theatre, the performance combines drama, humour, shadow puppetry and song.
Later in the season, The Playground Theatre teams up with Jonathan Taylor Productions to present the play by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre that sparked a major international film. Not seen on stage for nearly 75 years, The Respectable Prostitute (20 May – 6 June) is set in 1940s Louisiana. 1940s America is hot, steamy, and wild. Neon signs fill the streets with light while a sinister air blows. In the midst of lies, fake news, racism and other daily affronts in the southern United States, an innocent prostitute wants to tell the truth about a brutal murder while an influential senator tries to convince her otherwise.
Finally, The Playground Theatre and husband and wife team Alba Arikha and Tom Smail present an opera based on Arikha’s memoir Major/Minor. Blue Electric (8 – 14 June) is a captivating glance into the life of an average teenage girl in 1980s Paris, and the extraordinary historical secrets lurking in her father’s past. A teenage girl in 1980’s Paris attempts to lead a normal adolescent existence - falling in love, rebelling, searching for her identity - against the backdrop of her volatile artist father’s secret history of war, holocaust and exile. Blue Electric is an opera of juxtapositions: contemporary orchestral music and bursts of pop music, adolescent preoccupations and S.S. death camps. The show will be directed by Hugh Hudson, director of the BAFTA and Oscar winning film Chariots of Fire.
The Playground Theatre is an off-West End theatre dedicated to nurturing new talent and staging an international programme of shows. Led by co-Artistic Directors Peter Tate and Anthony Biggs, the unique space is a former bus depot located on Latimer Road. Its name is intended as an invitation to theatre makers and performers to come and “play”, and to encourage bold experimentation with new works for the stage. Since it opened, The Playground Theatre has cultivated relationships with international companies and practitioners. To date, this has seen the venue work with leading creatives from Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Japan and beyond.
The theatre continues to run its mental health initiatives: Well Read and Well Written. Well Read is a script reading project created by The Playground Theatre in partnership with St Charles Hospital involving mental health and older adult patients. Well Written, which was recently honoured at the London Region WEA Educational Impact Awards, sees service users at St Charles collaborate to write a new play alongside an established playwright.
Listings information
The Playground Theatre, 8 Latimer Industrial Estate, Latimer Rd, London W10 6RQ
Fragments by Potential Difference
30 April – 16 May
Press night: 4 May
Fragments by Laura Swift and Russell Bender will have its world premiere at the Playground Theatre. Inspired by the vast collections of papyrus stored in museums around the world, Fragments is an irreverent, song-filled exploration of the hidden world of papyrus conservation. As a team of archaeologists, quest to piece together fragments of an ancient lost masterpiece by Euripides, Fragments explores how stories – and our worldviews - are made out of fragments, with our assumptions plugging the gaps.
Category: Play, comedy/drama
Suitable for age 12+
The Respectable Prostitute by Jonathan Taylor Productions 20 May – 6 June
Press night: 21 May
The story that sparked a major international film, Jean-Paul Sartre’s play The Respectable Prostitute returns to the stage after nearly 75 years. 1940s America is hot, steamy, and wild. Neon signs fill the streets with light while a sinister air blows. Powerful people spread false truths for their personal ambition. In the midst of lies, fake news, racism and other daily affronts in the southern United States, an innocent prostitute wants to tell the truth about a brutal murder while an influential senator tries to convince her otherwise. The first UK production in 1947 was directed by Peter Brook.
A film adaptation, La Putain Respectueuse was released in 1952.
This production is dedicated to the memory of Marcel Berlins.
Category: Play, drama
Suitable for age 13+
Blue Electric by Alba Arikha and Tom Smail 8 – 14 June
Blue Electic is an opera that is based on Alba Arikha’s acclaimed memoir Major/Minor, music by Tom Smail, libretto by Alba Arikha, set and costume by Madeleine Boyd, directed by Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire).
A teenage girl in 1980’s Paris attempts to lead a normal adolescent existence - falling in love, rebelling, searching for her identity - against the backdrop of her volatile artist father’s secret history of war, holocaust and exile. Blue Electric, is a collaboration between husband and wife, an opera of juxtapositions: contemporary orchestral music and bursts of pop music, adolescent preoccupations and S.S. death camps It is about a father and daughter and the effect – years later - of the Holocaust on their relationship, a subject which has rarely been addressed in operatic form.
Category: Opera, drama
Suitable for age 12+
