27 April - 9 June 2012

£28, £20, £12. Mondays all seats £10.

Production Company: Royal Court Theatre and Paines Plough, in association with Drum Theatre Plymouth present

Playwright: by Mike Bartlett

Lead Quote: ‘Young people, our age. We’re the moment. Henry’s just that bit too old he can’t understand.’

Reviews: ***** ,??The Daily Mail by Quentin Letts, 4 May 2012?? , ,Playwright Mike Bartlett, b.1980, takes a tremendous pop at the ,Fifties babyboomer generation which, ‘hung out’ in the flower-power era, smoked weed, received full student grants, divorced like Tudors and has now taken early retirement on large pensions — just before the West’s economy went bung. , ,Mr Bartlett kebabs ’em, good and proper, those ghastly perpetual groovers with their sub-Paul McCartney ways, their contempt for family loyalty, their insistence on doing their own thing. , ,This play seltzer-fizzes with indignation (and bad language) but is laced with enough humour and dramatic verve that by the end of the last preview the audience was roaring its approval. , ,This was amazing, given that many of them looked exactly the sort of privileged floaters this play satirises so well. , ,Love, Love, Love is so titled, in part, because of the lyrics in the Beatles song All You Need Is Love. That tune is playing one evening in 1967 when sexy Sandra visits brothers Kenneth and Henry in their dingy London flat. , ,Posh Sandra (Victoria Hamilton, here a delicious cross between the young Antonia Fraser and Elizabeth Taylor) is the new girlfriend of grafter Henry. , ,He has just had a hard day at work. Henry (Sam Troughton) is a square. , ,He likes only classical music. Sandra, who is stoned, starts flirting with the younger, trendier, lazier, more intellectual Kenneth (Ben Miles). They elope. , ,Act Two takes us to 1990, in Kenneth and Sandra’s middle-class house. The set has been completely changed in the first of two intervals. Busy night for the stagehands. , ,Kenneth and Sandra are heavy drinkers, awful parents. They have two teenagers, Jamie and Rosie. Miss Hamilton has by now transformed Sandra into a careerist shouter. , ,She and Kenneth have both had affairs and are aghast at their humdrum existence. ‘We live in Reading,’ says Kenneth. ‘Something has gone wrong.’ , ,The Court audience loved that line. But the admirably aspirational Berskhire town of Reading can relax. Mr Bartlett’s real target is these snobbish, spoilt characters. In Act Three, we have moved to 2011. , ,Divorced, retired Kenneth, who dresses in fraudulent white floaty shirt and deck pumps, looks just like Tony Blair on holiday. , ,He lives in a modern country house: another set, warmly lit. , ,Jamie (George Rainsford), now an adult, is a wreck. Rosie (Claire Foy, excellent) turns up with a problem of her own. , ,She complains that her parents gave her so little guidance when she was young. Back comes the response: ‘Why did you listen to us? We’re your parents. You’re supposed to rebel.’ , ,Throughout, the acting is top notch, the pace of James Grieve’s direction just right. , ,The one tin-ear moment is when Mr Bartlett has Rosie bawl at her parents that their generation voted for Thatcher, Blair and Cameron. , ,In my experience, the people most loopily prejudiced against David Cameron and his deficit reduction plan are guilt-ridden 60-somethings who hate the thought of the splurging years coming to an end. , ,They still do not see that they bankrupted the country, financially and morally. Mr Bartlett should correct that political blind spot because it is key to the fecklessness of these old hippies. , ,Otherwise, this is an exciting evening, dart-sharp, horribly true. ‘Love, love, love,’ sing The Beatles, as the babyboomer adults (who never grew up) embark on another episode of self-absorption, leaving the next generation once again to clear up the mess. , , ,**** ,??The Evening Standard by Henry Hitchings, 4 May 2012?? , ,This piercingly funny play by Mike Bartlett takes its name from the opening line of The Beatles’ anthemic All You Need Is Love. , ,It is a satire on the selfishness of baby boomers, illuminated by some beautifully nuanced performances — notably from Victoria Hamilton. , ,The action spans more than 40 years. When it begins, the self-obsessed and bohemian Sandra (Hamilton) is dating the rather square Henry, played by Sam Troughton. But she is seduced by the more rock’n’roll credentials of his brother Kenneth (Ben Miles), a handsome and tousled student. , ,Bartlett follows this less than lovable couple as they transform into disillusioned fortysomethings, loudly dissecting their marriage, before settling into a sedate retirement. , ,Unsurprisingly, their children Rose and Jamie turn out to be stifled by their influence. Rose is played with fierce precision by Claire Foy, recently seen in the BBC’s White Heat. She resents her parents’ level of material comfort. “Buy me a house,” she demands. It is a request that bounces off their carapace of smugness. , ,Meanwhile Jamie (George Rainsford) retreats into a state of erratic and barely articulate detachment. , ,Rose speaks for both in complaining that the baby boomers, instead of changing the world as they had once hoped, merely succeeded in privatising it. The barbs are sharp. They prove most acute in the play’s Sixties phase (more than a decade before Bartlett was born), when the seeds of later strife are sown. The self-love of that period’s young adults, Bartlett seems to say, kept them from learning about responsibility. , ,The plotting edges towards the schematic and sometimes context is strangely absent. Surely Sandra would tell Henry that she is a student at Oxford? And ought we not to have an idea of what careers Kenneth and Sandra pursue? Yet the writing is observant and James Grieve’s production, though it sags at a couple of points, mainly has a lucid intensity. , ,It is the superb Hamilton and Miles, who over the course of nearly three hours have to portray both teenagers and characters in their sixties, who make the most telling impression. , ,Hamilton appears especially to relish the blithe awfulness of Sandra. But plaudits also go to Bartlett, who leaves us thinking that love, despite its rewards, definitely isn’t all you need. , , ,***** ,??WhatsOnStage by Michael Coveney, 4 May 2012?? , ,Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love is one of the most ambitious, and most accomplished, domestic dramas in a long while and in James Grieve’s fine production boasts two performances by Victoria Hamilton and Ben Miles that will surely feature at the year’s end in all the awards lists. , ,They play Sandra and Kenneth, trippy hippy lovers at Oxford in the late 1960s, then embittered parents in 1990 (“We live in Reading; something’s gone wrong”) and finally selfishly reunited old friends in 2011. , ,Why the “selfish”? It is Bartlett’s fashionable, reactionary (and deeply flawed) view that the baby-boomers, beneficiaries of the post-war re-build and new moral laxity, have spoilt the world for their children. , ,In a coruscating third act the couple’s daughter, Rose (Claire Foy), an impecunious musician who can’t afford a child, a house or a car, accuses her parents not of changing the world, but of buying it. Their son, Jamie (George Rainsford), is a monosyllabic, unemployed iPad geek sharing a home and a wine collection with his indolent father. , ,As in 13, his underrated dystopian epic at the National last year, Bartlett reveals a fine talent for the Shavian rant, having earned the right with a strong theatrical set-up. While Sandra and Kenneth may sound a little like characters evoking the sixties rather than living them, the shift in social tectonic plates is brilliantly done. , ,The first upheaval is Kenneth’s snaffling of Sandra from under the nose of his elder brother, Henry (Sam Troughton), a working-class billboard poster man who’s caught the eye of a passing “bird”. That “bird,” like Kenneth, is at Oxford and the druggy die is cast. , ,The expected split between brothers is left unexplored as the play accelerates to the domestic jungle with accusations of infidelity and Sandra’s drinking causing deep unhappiness all round. The echoes of the Beatles’ song of the title (as in, “All You Need Is...”) suggest that love is usually never enough. , ,Hamilton gives a ravishing display of huskily-voiced self-centredness while Miles, unrecognisable as the lolloping student of the first act, drifts into middle-aged soulless inertia then retired material smugness (earning £60,000 a year without doing anything) in a natural, utterly convincing dramatic progression. , ,In some ways, Bartlett’s play – co-produced by the Court with Paines Plough in association with the Drum Theatre Plymouth – is an act of revenge by one generation on another. As such, it’s a classic Court play with an authentic noise of anger and resentment. , ,It’s also very funny, brilliantly designed by Lucy Osborne, and cheeringly given the full main-stage treatment that should ensure the sort of maximum cultural impact once the province of John Osborne and, more recently, David Hare and Jez Butterworth. , , ,**** ,??Time Out by Caroline McGinn, 4 May 2012?? , ,They retired early, to vast houses that their unlucky spawn will never be able to afford, which they don't even bother to live in because they're off shafting the planet with cheap flights to sun'n'plonk-drenched global beauty spots, which are overrun by silver surfers just like them. , ,Since 2010, when Mike Bartlett's pointed black comedy about a pair of baby boomers premiered at the Drum Theatre in Plymouth, this permatanned generation has been pilloried in the papers for visibly enjoying its state-pensioned, NHS-prolonged life while the rest of us graft and groan. But it's hard to work up outrage when the baby boomers in question - swinging '60s sweethearts Sandra and Kenneth - have most of the best lines and all of the fun. , ,Bartlett's comedy shows Sandra and Kenneth's lives in three acts. In the first - set in the summer of 1967 - the spectacularly stoned Sandra wafts into student Ken's life on the arm of his uptight older brother Henry, whom she ruthlessly ditches in the name of 'Love, Love, Love'. , ,In the second, it's booze, booze, booze as '90s Ken and Sandra, now married with two kids in Reading, screw other people, their own relationship and their devastated teens with total abandon. In the third it's 2011 and their 37-year-old daughter Rosie (Claire Foy): single, childless, car-less and renting in London, turns up to demand some of their money, money, money. , ,Bartlett is a big talent and, although this play's arguments seem less fresh than they did two years ago, it still sparkles in James Grieve's stylish, sexy production. Victoria Hamilton is its star: she takes Sandra from hippie chic 19-year-old to monstrous MILF, to radiant retiree with extravagant conviction and an amazing voice which oozes fag smoke, wine and unrepentant sin. , ,She and Ben Miles's Ken are a suburban Taylor and Burton - Bartlett exaggerates the damage they do to their children. But it's no good. Rosie's critique of her parents sounds didactic and dull despite its essential truth. Ken and Sandra's love hurts everyone around them but it heats up the stage. , ,In the final scene you're still rooting for the appalling duo as they float away from the demands of their kidults - whose misfortunes they cannot, after all, be wholly blamed for - on a cloud of nostalgia and boozecruise wine, into their extended personal sunset. , ,**** ,??The Guardian by Michael Billington, 4 May 2012?? , ,Mike Bartlett, as we know from plays such as 13 and Cock, can write big or small. In this piece, originally produced by Paines Plough and the Drum Plymouth in 2010, he combines the two modes. By following the fortunes of a particular couple from the late 1960s to the present, he offers an indictment of a generation. While I find his accusations a bit sweeping, his play is also rivetingly watchable. , ,Kenneth and Sandra originally meet in 1967 on the night of the first global TV show on which the Beatles sang All You Need Is Love: he's a drunken sponger, she's a stoned free spirit, and they hit it off immediately. By 1990, they are comfortably off, middle-class but curiously negligent towards their two children, and facing the wreckage of their marriage. But the payoff comes in a third-act family reunion when their daughter Rose, once a promising violinist and now a disappointed 37-year-old, rounds on them and their peace-and-love generation claiming: "You didn't change the world, you bought it." , ,As a survivor of the 60s, I think Bartlett is unfair to a decade that saw Britain become a better, more tolerant place: capital punishment was abolished, homosexuality decriminalised and racial discrimination outlawed. But he offers a wholly persuasive portrait of a couple who typify some of the less attractive aspects of the period, including its naivety and narcissism. James Grieve's production also boasts a peach of a performance from Victoria Hamilton, who moves brilliantly from the floaty sylph of the 60s to the fitness-conscious female of the present while suggesting they remain the same person. Ben Miles makes a similarly convincing journey from student scrounger to rural retiree without losing his self-absorption. Claire Foy as the couple's accusatory daughter, George Rainsford as their reclusive son and Sam Troughton as Kenneth's strait-laced brother are also first-rate in a play in which Bartlett exhilaratingly combines the domestic and the epic. , ,**** ,??Telegraph by Charles Spencer, 4 May 2012?? , ,Wow, this one packs a punch. In a theatre famous for encouraging angry young men, Mike Bartlett, a writer in his early thirties, lands some knock-out blows on the complacency and selfishness of the have-it-all baby- boomer generation. , ,First seen on tour in 2010, and now revived by the Court in a thrilling high voltage co-production with Paines Plough, this is a play that has you laughing uproariously at one moment and wincing painfully the next. , ,Compared with Bartlett’s big, baggy state of the nation dramas at the NT, this is a chamber piece, with just five characters. But it strikes me as Bartlett’s best work to date, with deeper characterisation, more personal themes, and scenes of extraordinary intensity and emotional truth shot through with dark humour. ,The action begins in 1967, during that fabled Summer of Love when the world seemed to turn from dreary black and white into a hippy-dippy Technicolor dream. , ,Sandra, a sexy, predatory Oxford undergraduate, high on dope, is meant to be having a date with Henry, a strait-laced 23 year old. But she promptly sets about seducing his younger brother, Kenneth, also 19 and at Oxford, and in the two subsequent acts we catch up with them in 1990, when they are married yuppies living in Reading with two teenage children of their own, and in 2011 when they are prosperously retired, amicably divorced and their children are in their thirties. , ,There are some jolting dramatic surprises as we follow the characters through more than 40 years, and Bartlett proves a stern and powerful moralist. His play insists that the soppy, sloppy self-indulgent values of the Sixties were often deeply selfish – it is significant that Kenneth and Sandra’s relationship began with an act of betrayal – and also suggests that that many of those who embraced the Sixties dream never fully grew up. The dramatist is also articulately indignant on behalf of the children of the baby boomers, who will never enjoy the easy lives and wealth of their feckless parents in these hard economic times. , ,The one problem that director James Grieve’s powerful, evocative and elegantly designed production can’t entirely solve is having the same actors, Ben Miles and Victoria Hamilton, playing the two main characters from their late teens to their 60s. Their acting is so excellent that it is usually possible to suspend disbelief, though the most powerful of the three acts is undoubtedly the middle one showing the couple breaking up in middle-age before the appalled gaze of their children. Significantly, it’s the one scene when the performers actually are about the same age as the characters they are playing. , ,Victoria Hamilton brilliantly manages to be both beguiling and vile as the hard-drinking, crassly insensitive Sandra, and there is equally fine work from Ben Miles as her husband, who seems superficially nicer but is actually equally selfish and complacent. , ,There are also haunting, heart-wrenching performances from Claire Foy and George Rainsford as their damaged children, and one leaves the theatre in no doubt that the Court has another timely, hard-hitting success on its hands. , ,**** ,??Financial Times by Sarah Hemming, 7 May 2012?? , ,“It’s your fault,” cries Rose, facing down her bemused parents as they sit sipping wine in the conservatory. Is she right? A struggling musician in her 30s, Rose can’t afford a house, a car or a baby. Her parents, she thinks, had it all: sex and drugs in their 20s; jobs and homes in their 40s; pensions and fun in their 60s. , ,So Mike Bartlett, in this scorching comedy, focuses on the generational shift in fortunes and the oft-repeated charge that the baby-boomers pulled up the ladder behind them. It’s a play that inevitably raises more questions than it answers, but it is ambitious and hugely amusing. And while Bartlett might simplify issues himself, what he demonstrates with great flair is how every generation simplifies the faults of the previous one. , ,Given the scale of his enquiry, he wisely keeps his focus tight. The play zooms in on one couple, Ken and Sandra, and revisits them over the years. We meet them first in 1967, a couple of pot-smoking students who talk freedom and change; then in 1990 when, married and mortgaged, they are chafing at the bit; finally in 2011 as they ramble recklessly towards old age. Each act contains a showdown, as the couple first get together, blatantly, under the nose of Ken’s brother (Sandra’s original boyfriend), then split up, callously in front of their teenage children, and finally reunite, ignoring their now adult children’s shaky plight. , ,Their song is the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love”, which lends the play its title. It’s soon apparent that their particular love is pretty self-obsessed. But Bartlett suggests their creed may have damaged their own happiness as well as that of others, offering an uncertain route to balancing freedom and responsibility. , ,Whatever your judgment on the couple, they are sensationally well played in James Grieve’s acerbically funny production. Victoria Hamilton and Ben Miles age four decades in under three hours and are at their best in their 1990s showdown: a drink-fuelled exchange that has the audience holding its breath. There is great support from Sam Troughton as the brother and Claire Foy as Rose, both brooding with resentment, and from George Rainsford as Jamie, the biggest casualty of the whole affair. , ,It’s too schematic, too broad and too academic at times (the 1960s dialogue in particular is implausibly self-conscious). But still this is a quizzical, funny and ultimately tragic play. , ,??Variety by David Benedict, 6 May 2012?? , ,In the final act of Mike Bartlett's time-traveling "Love, Love, Love," 37-year-old Rose (Claire Foy) rounds on her parents, excoriating them for lifelong irresponsibility, not least their sudden divorce. "It was dramatic," she cries. Ironically, highly entertaining though this sharp comedy initially is, fully dramatic it isn't. Rose's climactic political analysis is driven not by character or preceding drama but by Bartlett's theorizing. In a novel, a form privy to commentary, that's fine. In a play, this lengthy "what the play's about" speech feels like a cheat. , ,Bartlett's attack on the selfishness of the baby-boomer generation starts out in the summer of 1967 with 19-year-old Kenneth (Ben Miles), down from Oxford university, taking up too much space in the scrappy flat of his four-square, hard-working older brother Henry (Sam Troughton). With arguments about class and underwear hanging out to dry, it's like a more muzzled "Look Back in Anger" without the ironing board. , ,Into this combustible mix wafts Henry's privileged girlfriend Sandra. Played by Victoria Hamilton with blissful comic timing, Sandra is stoned and thinks nothing of filling the room with tension as she manipulates everyone to her advantage with talk of the future and free love while eyeing up Kenneth. It's blisteringly clear that, at old-school Henry's expense, these two will get their way. , ,Jump-cutting in the second act to 1990, married Kenneth and Sandra are now mired in parenting and other traditional mid-life crises. On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Rose and her 14-year-old brother Jamie (George Rainsford) are as dismissive of their parents as they are secretly needy. , ,Bartlett's lacerating dialogue balances satiric intent with painful truth about a long-married couple who feel trapped. Fueled by wine, tiredness and disappointment with whatever happened to their youthful idealism, Miles and Hamilton simply don't miss a trick as they tear strips off one another. Their zinging precision means bitter laughs fly and everything turns nasty with unexpected revelations. However, the consequent sudden rise in stakes comes at the expense of plausibility. , ,That sense of contrivance becomes even more present in the third and last scene, set in 2011, where Rose brings her divorced parents back together for the afternoon so that she can read them the riot act. There are still some laughs at Kenneth and Sandra's selfishness but the scene, character trajectories and, crucially, Rose's grandstanding speech all feel constructed solely to support Bartlett's viewpoint. The overstated argument about the generation whose selfishness failed to create a better world for their children may be highly attractive, especially to younger audiences, but it's one-sided and not embodied by the preceding action. , ,James Grieve's production, recast from its 2010 premiere, has some inconsistencies of tone and performance but it is notably alert to Bartlett's painstakingly planted themes, which are echoed in Lucy Osborne's design, notably in her costumes. The latter not only unostentatiously nail the three different time-periods, they (and the wigs) expertly age Hamilton and Miles up and down to startling effect. But the neatness of the conception -- music in each era is referenced and evidenced by a record player, then a stereo system, then an iPad -- grows a shade wearying since it's ultimately as self-satisfied as the generation the play is attacking. , ,**** ,??Independent by Paul Taylor, 10 May 2012?? , ,The Philip Larkin line "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" is so widely applicable that it is almost useless as an epigraph. But though it is not cited here, it has a particular piercing pertinence to _Love, Love, Love_, a tragicomedy by Mike Bartlett which takes a mordantly funny, shrewd and highly entertaining look at the emotional legacy of the baby-booming generation, now heading into financially cushioned retirement as their children head deeper into debt. , ,The play began life on a Paines Plough tour last year. It is now splendidly re-mounted in a co-production (and at) the Royal Court by the same director, James Grieve, in tighter shape, re-cast with top-notch actors and more crisply designed. The title derives from the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" and the piece begins in 1967 on the day the song was aired on a global TV link-up, before fast forwarding to 1990 and 2011. , ,Victoria Hamilton is stunningly good as Sandra, the debby dolly bird who ditches the "square", dated lower-middle-class Henry (a sullen, simmering Sam Troughton) for Kenneth, his attractively-wastrel Oxbridge brother (excellent Ben Miles). Hamilton brilliantly skewers the dreamily stoned solipsism, caressing voiced condescension and utter scatter-brained sense of entitlement of this child of privilege who cries "We're going to die!" with sudden operatic urgency, as though this truism was a moment of inspired prophecy. , ,But Hamilton brings to the impossible Sandra an almost poignant air of impending desolation. Even when unearned, as here, that hippy idealism can't help but move you in its fragility to time and to the way dreamers have to become authority figures in their turn. When I saw the play I was reminded of Edina and Saffy from _Ab Fab_ in Sandra's alcoholically neglectfully-needy relationship with her daughter, Rose (spot-on Claire Foy). The latter is first encountered as a mortified teenager and then, in 2011, as a 37 year-old musician failure who, blaming her purblind parents for luring her into false hopes, demands that they compensate by buying her a house. , ,In this revival, Hamilton's Sandra, swigging wine from the bottle and conducting a public autopsy on her marriage, impresses me more with the sense that the character's vindictive irresponsibility is a product of real love for the straying Kenneth. Among the victims of baby- boomer emotional values are certain monstrous baby-boomers. _Love, Love, Love_ is ace; go, go, go. , ,**** ,??Sunday Times by Jane Edwardes, 13 May 2012?? , ,Conservative ministers and Royal Court playwrights don’t usually sing from the same hymn sheet, but David Willetts and Mike Bartlett are agreed that the baby-boomers have stolen their children’s futures. Bartlett’s lively play consists of three scenes tracing the relationship of Kenneth and Sandra. In 1967, Ben Miles’s Kenneth, a scrounging student, gets together with Victoria Hamilton’s wacky Sandra. Even this is a betrayal, and it’s their self-indulgence that Bartlett criticises as the couple settle for making as much money as they can. “You didn’t change the world, you bought it,” says their daughter (Claire Foy), who in 2011 is finding life much tougher than they did. There is a peach of a performance from Hamilton, who is horrifically funny both as the spaced-out student and as the mouthy mother she becomes. An entertaining ride, even if this baby-boomer is not convinced by Bartlett’s thesis. , ,**** ,??Mail On Sunday by Georgina Brown, 13 May 2012?? , ,Taking it's title from The Beatles' All You Need Is Love, Mike Bartlett's astringently funny social satire _Love, Love, Love_ sets out to disprove the song: love is rarely enough and kids, especially, need guidance, direction and discipline. , ,The play dramatises the notion that the Sixties generation were emancipated egomaniacs who seized life with both hands. They worked hard, played hard and filled their pockets, but then kept it all to themselves - and couldn't care less about their children, or anyone else for that matter. , ,'Things are changing everyday at the moment', says the idealistic but idle Kenneth (Ben Miles), an Oxford graduate dossing in his brother Henry's dingy flat in London 1967. Their escape from dreary lower-middle class roots is evidence of the Sixties' social shake-up - although Henry's ambition goes no further than his black leather jacket and a job putting up posters. Ken is out to get whatever is going which includes Henry's groovy pot-smoking chick Sandra (Victoria Hamilton). All legs and bosoms nicely shown off in her psychedelic dress, she is up for anything. 'We're the moment' she slurs, swaying. , ,Jump to 1990: Ken and Sandra are earning enough to send their teenage children, Jamie and Rosie, to private school, but otherwise neglect them. 'We're in Reading', says Sandra, 'Something's gone wrong.' Drunk and impulsive, she decides she's trapped and feels entitled to do her own selfish thing and get out. A spineless Ken aquiesces. , ,In the final act, Jamie (George Rainsford), a childlike thirty-something dropout, still lives with his comfortably retired dad in a swanky house with a pool, while Rosie (Claire Foy) blames both parents for her unsuccessful music career, non-existent love life and having no money. 'You climbed a ladder and broke it after you. You didn't change the world. You bought it, privatised it.' she whines. 'Buy me a house.' Her parents are too wrapped up in themselves to care a jot. , ,The different atmospheres of the three periods are well captured, by by both Bartlett's writing and James Grieve's direction, and there are tremendous performances, especially Hamilton as breathy Sandra and Miles as weak-willed Ken. They somehow manage to age from their teens to their 60s with considerable conviction. It is a provocative portrait of appalling parenting but also hugely entertaining. , ,

Ticket Information: Mondays all seats £10 (available on the day of perf from 9am online, 10am in-person.) ,Concessions £5 off top two prices (available in advance for all performances until 5 May inclusive and all matinees. For all other performances, available on a standby basis on the day) ,25s and under £8 (ID required, not bookable online) ,School and HE Groups of 8+ 50% off top two prices (available Tuesday–Friday) ,Groups of 6+ £5 off top price (available Tuesday–Friday, not bookable online) ,Access £12 (plus a companion at the same rate)

Fri 11 May - Sat 4 August 2012

£52.50, £45.00, £35.00, £25.00, £15.00. Premiums £75.00

Production Company: Royal Court Theatre Productions and Ambassador Theatre Group Present the Royal Court Theatre production of

Playwright: by Laura Wade

Lead Quote: 'I've got a new law for you mate, it's called survival of the fittest, it's called fxxx you we're the Riot Club.'

Reviews: Reviews from the Original Production: , ,**** ,??The Sunday Times, By Naomi Alderman, April 25th 2010?? , ,Oxford University thrives on mythology - on the stories that past and present students tell about themselves. Heres one: when I was at Oxford, a man I knew, an ex-public schoolboy, obtained the keys to another mans room and - how to put this? - passed a bowel movement on his floor. On purpose. And left it there. When his friend wanted to know what he'd done to deserve this, he explained it was an expression of friendship. Just like they'd done at his school, he said. , ,The characters in Laura Wade's play Posh would have no difficulty with this logic. They are members of the 'Riot Club' who take delight in destroying one another's possessions, not to mention emotional wellbeing, as a sign of a troubling sort of friendship. To join the club, members have to agree to have their room 'trashed', which includes, for example, suspending their clothes from the light fitting, so for a second 'it looks like someone hanged themselves', and having another man masturbate on their books. The Riot Club is most famed for its termly dinners, which begin with toasts and ceremony, and end with the destruction of the room they are held in. The play takes place mostly around one such dinner. , ,Wade herself didnt attend Oxford, although I wouldnt have been able to tell from the play: its characters and settings were extremely convincing. Most of us, of course, will never participate in a social circle quite like this, so its hard to tell how accurately the particular mores of the club are portrayed, but the dawning realisation for most ordinary Oxford students that there is a social stratum they can never reach - that, as one of the clubs members puts it, 'theres another floor their lift doesnt go up to' - is very real. It was this realisation that sowed the seed for my new novel, The Lessons, in which my middle-class narrator, James, goes up to Oxford and joins the wealthy set of the mercurial Mark, but finds himself increasingly out of his depth. I met people at Oxford who were wealthier and better connected than anyone Id previously encountered: one student was dropped off at the start of term by a diplomat relative in an ambassadorial car; several had trust funds. I was fascinated by these privileged lives, but noticed that an excess of money didnt seem to make them happier and ended up stripping some people of the ambitions and desires that keep the rest of us creatively engaged with life. I loved Oxford for its beauty and intellectual atmosphere; I hated it for its narrowness and pockets of privilege. Both these feelings have gone into The Lessons. , ,The sound most frequently made by the Riot Club - the drunken roaring of young upper-class men - evoked an almost Pav lovian reaction of dread in me. Perhaps because they behaved with an air of such entitlement, I ended up believing the university was really meant for men like this, not for studious middle-class Jewish girls. , ,There is, of course, a topical element to the play. The Riot Club is based on the real-life Oxford-based Bullingdon Club, whose motto is 'I like the sound of breaking glass', and whose former members include Boris Johnson and David Cameron. One doesnt have to be an advocate of class struggle to be disturbed by the idea that the mayor of our capital and the leader of the opposition once enjoyed smashing up private property before leaving a shower of banknotes in their wake as a humiliating recompense. , ,Wade herself is clearly disturbed by the club, although the sense of menace develops slowly across the play. At the start, the club members are mostly figures of fun. Guy Bellingfield, played with perfect overeager oiliness by Joshua McGuire, wants to make a mark on the club, but only by rethinking its catering. Ed Montgomery (Kit Harington), it emerges, hid his teddy bear from the room-trashing. For the first hour, it seems this might be a light comedy: the traditional British pursuit of laughing at the upper classes and their foibles. However, darker undertones emerge, then explode at the end in a way I found somewhat implausible. , ,There are fine depictions of the char acters representing the real world: Chris, the landlord of the pub where the dinner takes place (Daniel Ryan); his waitress daughter, Rachel (Fiona Button); and Charlie, the prostitute the club members book to service them during the meal (Charlotte Lucas). The two women, in particular, are played as the sanest characters in the face of increasing levels of sexual threat from drunk, aggressive young men. The staging is interesting, too: the boxed-in space of the formal dining room where the action takes place is surrounded by an industrial landscape, suggesting that the Riot Club is an anachronistic bubble within a utilitarian but colourless Britain. , ,It is one of the great problems of modern Britain - and of Oxford University, a quint essentially British institution - that we want to be proud of our history and traditions at the same time as understanding that they contain much to cause us shame. At my old college, Lincoln, on Ascension Day, senior students go up to the roof of Front Quad and hurl down hot pennies - heated in the oven - to waiting children from local schools. The children wear gloves; its all good fun. Yet this tradition has its roots in a particularly cruel form of charity: wealthy sons of nobility tossing coins to poor town children for the amusement of watching them burn themselves. Is it a hideous history, best forgotten, or a quaint ritual, important to preserve? This tension is everywhere in Oxford. , ,At the end of Poshs first act, the most aggressive club member, in sightfully and convincingly portrayed by Leo Bill, has a tour de force speech in which he rails against the levelling forces in modern Britain. The landlord 'thinks he can have anything if he works hard enough... thinks his daughters getting a useful education at Crapsville College... thinking theyre cultured cause they read a big newspaper and eat asparagus and pretend not to be racist... I am sick to f***ing death of poor people'. Posh is thoughtful, engaging, funny and ultimately troubling. It runs for almost three hours, mostly set in a single room, but feels pacey and wide-ranging. At its heart is a moral question: do we think fairness should be our most important value, or is it more vital to retain the eccentric colour of our history, even at the risk of creating monsters? , ,Class continues to be the great British theme, however much we might like to pretend it has gone away. It is a part of our national story; the days when Britain was the greatest power on earth were also the days of strictly enforced class boundaries. The empire we exported was based on the premise that our upper class was destined to rule not just other Britons, but the world. Our stately homes were built by these people, our impressive national buildings commissioned by them, our universities founded by them. The question posed by Posh, and by the continued existence of clubs such as the Bullingdon, is to what extent we still consider them, and their values, admirable , ,***** ,??Time Out, By Sam Marlowe, April 20th 2010?? , ,Laura Wade's depiction of wealth and privilege is savagely funny, but it's undercut by an observation as coolly sharp as cut glass: there's a reason why the upper-class dolts she portrays behave as if they and their kind run Britain - it's because, on the whole, they do. And with an election looming, her play is a timely warning against making that inequality manifest by handing the keys of No 10 to a former member of just such an elitist institution as Wade and director Lindsey Turner show us, in hideous, braying full flow. , ,At a rural gastropub, the Riot Club - an Oxford University dining society closely related to the real-life Bullingdon - meets for its regular huzzah, at which it is customary to get absolutely 'chateaued' before wrecking the premises. But this evening, all is not blue-blooded brotherly love. Discontented members, believing that the club is failing to live up to its notoriety, are angling to seize its presidency from the current incumbent. Guy (Joshua McGuire) tries to curry favour by devising a menu of repulsive excess, Harry (Harry Hadden-Paton) hires 'a prozzer' and Dimitri (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) arranges a post-prandial jaunt to Reykjavik. Cracks in the camaraderie appear: Greek Dimitri is on the receiving end of racist jibes, a new boy is pilloried for his 'Brideshead'-ish teddy bear - 'It's a family heirloom!' he protests - and another's sexual confusion erupts in an ugly act of macho posturing involving the pub landlord's daughter. And all of them seethe with resentment at what they regard as the erosion of respect due to them as a birthright, and at a modern world in which their family's country piles must be thrown open to plebeian visitors and poor Mummy, decamped to the Knightsbridge flat, despairs at the influx of Arabs in the area. , ,The action is framed by two scenes in which Guy's Tory MP godfather (Simon Shepherd), ensconced in a gentleman's club that is essentially a grown-up version of the Riot, outlines the importance of allegiance and the way in which the old school tie binds the privileged together, ensuring that they collaborate to protect and perpetuate their position of power. The play is a little overlong, its build towards violent climax inevitable. But as grotesque as Turner's superbly acted production maybe, at its core it's also chillingly lifelike and horribly pertinent. Nastily effective. , , ,??The Independent, By Kate Bassett, April 18th 2010?? , ,The Royal Court is doing its darndest to sabotage the Conservatives' election campaign. That's what it looks like anyway, because Posh Laura Wade's new main house play is a fictionalised group portrait of something not that far from the Bullingdon Club. , ,If anyone needs reminding, that's the dining club of super-rich and aristocratic Oxford University chaps whose longstanding custom it is to smash up local restaurants, and then escape trouble by throwing money at the gobsmacked staff. David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson are old Bullingdon boys. , ,In Lyndsey Turner's superbly cast ensemble production, nine young toffs and their feckless president, Tom Mison's James, descend on a gastro pub in the Oxfordshire countryside. They hire a private room ox-blood red with antlers on the wall and dress up in archaic tail-coated uniforms, as in those 1980s photographs of Cameron and co. Except this bunch call themselves the Riot Club and, since they're using an iPhone to check that a call girl is on her way, the setting must be now. Thus Wade keeps one step clear of a potentially libellous biodrama, while exploring the broader possibilities of a political and economic allegory. , ,Her point is partly plus a change. In a darkly satirical vein, these arrogant twerps who regard top City and parliamentary posts as their birthright build up to their act of shameless vandalism, while preserving the Club's ludicrous traditions. They bray the National Anthem, make endless toasts to long-dead members, and no one is allowed to leave the room. Leaving the room is a club offence, so sick bags are provided. , ,What's hair-raising, as well as comical, is how coarsely bigoted these supposedly well-bred chaps are behind closed doors, slipping on the mask of abstemious decency whenever they have to placate the landlord, Daniel Ryan's burly Chris. There's a chilling trace of Patrick Hamilton's 1920s thriller Rope in these young gents' hidden brutality. , ,The tension mounts as they indulge in leadership in-fighting (a touch of New Labour there?) and as the masks begin to slip. This could all end in bloodshed. Leo Bill's drunken, vituperative Alistair rails against small businessmen like this landlord for wrecking the financial status quo, and his chums turn their attention to the waitress, the landlord's not entirely obliging daughter, Rachel (Fiona Button). , ,More intellectual brilliance would have been welcome. The political arguments are somewhat fuzzy even when Alistair is sober, and there is a whiff of demonising melodrama about the close, when he is conspiratorially recruited as future PM material. If there is a stand-out performance, it's David Dawson as the fey Hugo, with his feverish, glittering grin. However, everyone is superb: this is an array of young acting talent to rival that of The History Boys. , , ,**** ,??The Financial Times, By Ian Shuttleworth, April 18th 2010?? , ,Seldom can a shows opening night have been so topical in so many ways. The fictitious Riot Club in Laura Wades play is loosely inspired by the real-life Bullingdon Club at Oxford University, which counts both Conservative leader David Cameron and shadow chancellor George Osborne among its former members, so a press performance on the night of the televised party leaders debate seemed fortuitous. Then one of the 10 young toffs whose bibulous dinner is portrayed announces that theyre going on somewhere afterwards. To Reykjavik, in fact. Were going tonight? asks another. Er, not on the night an Icelandic volcano cloud halts all flights to and from Britain. Rather less fortuitous, that one. , ,The Eyjafjallajkull eruption would be beyond them; but otherwise there seems to be little these young bloods do not instinctively believe they can bend to their will. Wades play is not simply, if at all, a broadside in the class war. What is under the microscope is not patrician privilege in itself (although one of the meals ritual toasts can only be delivered by someone with an aristocratic title), but the sense of entitlement that informs it. , ,The blithe assurance with which they set out to get bladdered and trash a restaurants private dining room is fundamentally no different from the bravado of a bling-laden posse pouring Dom Prignon on to the floor of a nightclub (the play is punctuated by bizarre a capella renditions of RnB numbers) or of a petty benefit fraudster...and, indeed, these nobs share some of the same suppressed insecurities. It is significant that their most withering contempt is directed not towards the proles but towards the middle classes, whose aspirations and sheer numbers have wrested so much power away from them. , ,Director Lyndsey Turner has crafted a fine ensemble production, which does its best to keep a lid on broad comedic playing for fear of attenuating the plays power. Leo Bill gradually emerges as the most dangerous of the Rioters in several ways, with Fiona Button and Charlotte Lucas each shaping up as more than the token females they might at first appear. The violent climax and the Machiavellian coda are both predictable, but neither falls flat. So is this a play whose time has come? Check back after the election next month. , ,**** ,??The Evening Standard, By Henry Hitchings, April 16th 2010?? , ,To most people the phenomenon of the Oxbridge dining society seems about as real as a unicorns horn. The prospect of a government that features more than one alumnus of this gilded world feels distressingly weird. , ,In Laura Wades beautifully observed, very funny play, that world is anatomised. Her invention, the Riot Club, is a kind of Bullingdon lite an Oxford coterie made up of minor aristos, landed yobs and foreign plutocrats. , ,We focus on an end-of-term dinner, in the dining room of a rural gastropub conveniently remote from Oxford and the clubs bad reputation. Its an occasion for messy tomfoolery, flagrant snobbery and violence. , ,Chippy sophomore Guy, informed by his uncle that it was once normal to gorge on a 10-bird roast and smash every chandelier in sight, is inspired to up the ante. This term the menu is going to be special. And, as it turns out, others have big plans: getting a prozzer in, and jetting off somewhere unusual for a postprandial shindig. , ,The clubs members engage with one another in a curiously antagonistic style. For instance, when it emerges that the president has applied to work at a German bank, his application form is read out as if its the most toe-curling of pre-adolescent love letters. , ,The swanky horseplay, repellent yet fascinating, is brilliantly acted, while Lyndsey Turners skilful direction means theres never a dull moment. There are deft and surprising touches, such as a close harmony version of Wileys electro-grime anthem Wearing My Rolex. Surrealism is never far away. , ,The ensemble work is outstandingly good: fluid, layered, always plausible. The standout performances come from Henry Lloyd-Hughes, magnetic as sinister Dimitri, and Leo Bill, thrillingly repulsive as the reptilian Alistair. , ,There are flecks of implausibility. Would a Riot Club member really refer to the toilet and sneer at someone who called it a lavatory? Where are the gruesome initiation rituals? And the Riot Club members dont even drink all that much. Still, Wades gifts as a satirist are beyond doubt. While its conclusion strives a little too hard for immediate relevance, this play combines topicality with dramatic appeal. It mostly works a treat. To adopt the preposterous argot of its characters: Mate this is savage. , ,**** ,??Whats On Stage, By Michael Coveney, April 16th 2010?? , ,Scabrously funny, disgustingly smug, and deeply disturbing, Laura Wades brilliant new play Posh shows a group of public school rich boys behaving badly in an Oxfordshire private dining club and lamenting their loss of a country they think they both own and created. , ,Clearly based on the Bullingdon at Oxford University (of which David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson were prominent members), the plays Riot Club is also a metaphor in the class divide, and represents a streak of political brutality in the Conservative Party that for the moment lies dormant as candidate Dave develops his compassionate image. , ,Its hugely ironic that one of Camerons big ideas is for a citizens army recruited to repair a damaged society, presumably the one duffed up by his chums in the Bullingdon. The most ferocious member of Wades Riot Club is Leo Bills ratty and vengeful Alistair Ryle who delivers a broadside against the mediocrity, poverty and aspirations of the hoi polloi, as well as chaps who keep their cheese in the fridge. , ,The others live in country houses overrun by tourists and one has been reduced to sneaking an application to join the Deutsche Bank. They assemble in Anthony Wards wittily conceived gastropub dining room in their evening dress of red bow ties, stripy waistcoats and gold-lapelled dinner jackets to get well and truly chateaued while consuming a ten-bird-roast and awaiting a local prostitute (Charlotte Lucas). , ,The evening develops as an orgiastic ritual of humiliation involving their jovial pub host (Daniel Ryan) and his waitress daughter Rachel (Fiona Button), who is studying languages at Newcastle (Youd need to, there says one of the wags). The climactic horror is the toff equivalent of the baby-stoning scene in Edward Bonds Saved; this is a classic Royal Court play with a view from the other end of the telescope. , ,Lyndsey Turners superb production makes great use of a capella songs (and the toreadors march from Carmen) to cover scene changes and heighten the raucous mood, which is enhanced with cunning beauty by Paule Constables lighting and includes cross fades to the be-wigged founding members of the club in a dissolving portrait. , ,That continuity is expressed in the scenes that book-end the dinner in an oak-panelled London club where a Tory grandee (Simon Shepherd) first encourages his nephew (Joshua McGuire, a new Tom Hollander) to maintain the Riots standards of excess and finally fingers Alistair (who should be wearing a tie) as the sort of chap they can ease out of trouble with the law and into a top job, perhaps even the top job. , ,Tom Mison as the secret banker, Henry Lloyd-Hughes as a Greek rich kid (hes arranged a post-prandial group outing to Reykjavik) and the extraordinary David Dawson as a febrile poet of the right also shine in a hand-picked cast that do wonderful injustice to the play of the year so far and a fantastic Court follow-through to Jerusalem and Enron. , ,**** ,??The Daily Telegraph, By Charles Spencer, April 16th 2010?? , ,As the three main party leaders debated live on television last night, the Royal Court marked the election campaign with a good, old-fashioned piece of class war. , ,Laura Wades Posh is a dark comedy mostly set during a riotous, drunken dinner of an Oxford club closely modelled on the real-life Bullingdon, which counts David Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne among its former members. , ,Its a piece clearly designed to damage the Tory party at this sensitive time, but what was notable at the final preview of the play was just how many plummy accents there were in the stalls. The well-heeled and well-connected are beating a path to Posh. Perhaps they are hoping to relive the heady intoxicated days of their undergraduate youth, and recapture what Evelyn Waugh memorably described as the sound of English county families baying for broken glass. , ,The piece is undoubtedly entertaining, though I cant imagine David Cameron will enjoy it much. It persuasively captures that off-putting sense of entitlement that so often emanates from those who have been to leading public schools, and it captures the wit and intelligence of the characters, before they become hog-whimperingly drunk, as well as their revolting snobbery, condescension, cruelty and violence. , ,I suppose I also ought to declare a lack of interest here. Though often drunk and sometimes drugged in my own student days at Oxford, I was never a member of the Bullingdon, though I am listed as such on Wikipedia. Watching this portrait of hoorays turning swinish, Im cordially glad that I wasnt. , ,Wade captures the tribal language, the joshing and later the maudlin gibbering of these young blades with a maliciously sharp ear. And though not all 10 of the Riot Club members in their flashy tailcoats come to fully detailed life on stage, Lyndsey Turner directs a superbly assured and acted production that moves from uneasy laughter (the scene involving a dignified prostitute is a comic gem of social embarrassment) to something altogether darker and nastier. , ,Where I quarrel with the play is in its paranoid conspiracy theory that membership of clubs like the Bullingdon creates a network of power and influence in the politics of this country, a theory epitomised by an older, suavely sinister former member (Simon Shepherd) who appears in the opening and closing scenes, covering things up and pushing careers along. My bet is that Cameron and Co now all regard membership of the Bullingdon as more of a hindrance than a help. , ,Among the cast, Leo Bill as the most malign and hate-filled of the gang, David Dawson as a suave gay member, Richard Goulding as a genuinely likeable aristo and Tom Mison as the president who is beginning to loathe his own club are particularly memorable. , ,There is sterling work too, from Daniel Ryan as the pub landlord appalled to discover he has a bunch of upper-crust hooligans on his hands, Fiona Button as his plucky daughter and Charlotte Lucas as the call girl who puts the clubs members firmly in their place. The big question now is whether Dave, Boris and George will have the guts to see the show. , ,'*_Wade hits a number of nails on the head_*. She pins down the rage the club's members feel that their country has been stolen from them. *_She harpoons the masonic nature of much of English life in which self-perpetuating elites offer each other lifelong protection_*. Yet Wade also suggests that, when the chips are down, the Darwinian instinct for survival triumphs over the comradely ethos. All this is vividly portrayed and applicable to current politics'. ,*_By Michael Billington_*. ,

Ticket Information: Tickets £52.50, £45.00, £35.00, £25.00, £15.00 ,(Premium seats £75) ,Seniors Advance £39.50 Mon - Thurs (£29.50 on the day) ,Students £25 Wednesday matinee ,Groups 8+ £39.50 Mon - Thurs ,Schools 10+ £45/£35 reduced to £19.50 Mon-Thurs ,Access rate £15 - £52.50 , ,20 Day Seats are available for every performance from 10am at the Duke Of York's Theatre, St Martin's Lane. Maximum of 2 per person, £10 each. , ,Performances from 27 July take place during the London Olympics, so please check your travel routes in advance to make sure you can get to and from the Duke of York's Theatre safely. The Society of London Theatre (SOLT) and Transport for London (TfL) have released a special travel guide for theatre goers during this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is available on the "Official London Theatre website":www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/theatre2012 and on the "TfL website":www.tfl.gov.uk/london2012.

Marketable Venue Title: Duke of York's Theatre, St. Martin's Lane, WC2N 4BG

26 April - 26 May 2012

£20. Mondays all seats £10.

Production Company: The Royal Court Theatre And Tiata Fahodzi Present

Playwright: by Bola Agbaje

Lead Quote: ‘Supporters keh. Forget this country. How many year have you lived here…? Your English is better than the Queen’s and they still call you…' ,

Reviews: **** ,??The Times by Libby Purves, 3 May 2012?? , ,Ah, now here’s a sharp one! Tiata Fahodzi, the British-African company with its new artistic director Lucian Msamati in the leading role, bring to the Royal Court Upstairs a funny, honest and bitingly dark play by Bola Agbaje. Her last one (Gone Too Far) transferred downstairs and sold out. So should this. , ,Not a dull moment or an unintelligent line: and coming of a Nigerian family, Agbaje can drill into psychological, moral and political dilemmas which make many white ones seem positively bloodless, in every sense. We first meet our hero, the politician Kayode, sulking on a Croydon sofa in a Tracey Emin chaos of bottles, newspapers, torn election posters and takeaways. He has lost the election and is acerbically informed by his wife Rita (a cool, sophisticated Noma Dumezweni) that he is “trending on Twitter and being discussed on Loose Women”. He scored the own-goal of a “racist tweet” , insulting his equally black (but presumably West Indian) opponent. , ,Fresh off the plane erupts their woman friend Fola, a noisy sexy extrovert with a crush on him and a remit to persuade educated Nigerians to come home. Rita, a thoroughly second-generation Briton, hates her ancestral homeland — heat, flies, corruption — and knows that Kayode’s mother back home despises her . , ,He, on the other hand, feels that a trip would restore his spirits. Msamati nicely evokes the patriarchal grumpiness of the defeated UK politician, glaring and sulking as his Mama (a turbaned tornado played with terrifying conviction by Pamela Nomvete) prays and berates him into his old role as her clever son. He always was too European in his tastes, attracting mockery by eating with a fork. The houseboy calls him “Mr English Sir”. , ,Mama wants him to mentor her protegé, a naive former street-kid running in a Nigerian local election. The lad is in thrall to the local “Big Man”, a showy Chief played with brutal arrogance by Richard Pepple. Perilously for all three, the Westminster sophisticate gets lured into the politics of a country he no longer understands. The clash of African and European, exuberant hustler mentality against careful legalistic idealism, is both internal and, violently, external. Indhu Rubasingham directs, though the vigorous cast give the sense that they are doing it for themselves. Which is a tribute to her. , , ,??Evening Standard by Henry Hitchings, 3 May 2012?? , ,The theatre company Tiata Fahodzi exists to celebrate and question the experiences of Africans. Here in this co-production with the Royal Court, which will transfer to Peckham’s Bussey Building at the end of the month, it showcases the work of Bola Agbaje, a former nominee for this paper’s most promising playwright award. Lucian Msamati, the company’s artistic director, plays Kayode, a British MP who loses his seat as a result of slinging nasty allegations at an opponent — a sign to his constituents that he has lost touch with their views. , ,Chastened, he returns to his native Nigeria, against the wishes of wife Rita (a potent Noma Dumezweni). Ostensibly this is to take a break and see his mother. But other possibilities soon present themselves. , ,Meanwhile Rita has to put up with her raucous friend Fola, who mocks her for being insufficiently true to her origins (“Your nose is up in the air like you have smelt something dirty”). As the action switches between the two countries, Agbaje suggests their distinct cultures while evoking some of the pressures and uncertainties that face immigrants — both in their new homes and when they return to their roots. , ,Kayode is surprised to find his mother has an adopted son, Kunle (Ashley Zhangazha), and he’s struck by the generosity bestowed on this idealistic young man, who is seen as having leadership potential. Kayode contrives to get embroiled in Nigerian politics — a little implausibly. As he becomes more politically engaged he has to embrace elements of Nigerian culture. Yet his motives are questionable, and Msamati perfectly captures his mixture of defiance and awkwardness. , ,Agbaje’s writing is funny and pointed, asking questions about corruption and identity. Indhu Rubasingham’s production creates moments of real power, notably when Kayode struggles to make himself heard above the din of a teeming marketplace. The result is a tense and engaging if not always wholly persuasive satire. , ,??Sunday Times by Maxie Szalwinska, 6 May 2012?? , ,Kayode, a Nigerian-born, British-raised MP, is hiding under his duvet. He’s having a bad day after suffering an electoral defeat, and decides to return to Nigeria to recover and see his family. Once there, he finds his mother has acquired an adoptive son and gets caught up in tit-for-tat local politics. Kayode (Lucian Msamati) is also torn between the conflicting demands of his wife in London and his mother, jovial yet indefatigably contemptuous of her daughter-in-law. Where and to whom does Kayode belong? Bola Agbaje’s play doesn’t tiptoe around its questions of race and identity — it plunges right in. The drama isn’t always persuasive, and the actions of its protagonist don’t always add up, but Indhu Rubasingham’s production starts jauntily, darkening as it goes along. , ,??Variety by David Benedict, 3 May 2012?? , ,"For the first time in my life I'm not reminded that I'm black. You can't begin to imagine what that feels like." That heartfelt cry by Kayode (Lucian Msamati) is not just the climax of Bola Agbaje's engaging new play "Belong," it's the thematic pivot. Vigorous acting in Indhu Rubasingham's precise production gives energetic life to the play's examination of identity and exactly what constitutes "home," but although Agbaje sustains her impressively comic edge even as the material deepens, the increasing weakness of her plotting ultimately undermines the drama. , ,Having just lost an election in London thanks to stirring up racial controversy -- "You're still trending on Twitter," sighs his wife Rita (gracefully long-suffering Noma Dumezweni) -- black Nigerian politician Kayode decides to escape the heat by going to stay with his wealthy mother (Pamela Nomvete) in Nigeria. , ,But it's not just the discomfort of being a 45-year-old suddenly under his powerful mother's thumb that rankles. As he slowly discovers, being Nigerian-born is not enough. His position as a black man in his home country is massively compromised by his status as a highly educated, middle-class Brit. Moreover, his staunchly conservative way of doing things flies in the face of the practices of a divided society that, despite its rapid growth, or possibly because of it, is riven by corruption. , ,Agbaje smartly balances Kayode's struggle with arguments at his London home between London-loving Rita and their relentlessly superficial, one-time friend Fola (nicely comic Jocelyn Jee Esien) who always knows what's best (i.e. attracting any/everyone to Nigeria) and has never come to grips with the concept of listening to other people. Thanks to Ben Stones' versatile design, the similarity of the arguments in both countries is neatly underlined by having the same space double as opposing locations. , ,Wheedling, cajoling and switching between faux innocence and tough-mindedness, Pamela Nomvete lights up the stage as Mama. Alternately highly amusing and coldly authoritative, her focused energy stems from the richness of characterization that drives Agbaje's writing. It's surprising, therefore, to find the central character so underwritten. , ,Msamati is an actor of extraordinary range but even he cannot lend Kayode more than a sense of frustrated zeal. There's less of a fully-fledged character here, more a position around which Agbaje voices concerns about political identity. And the deeper she sends him into contemporary Nigerian politics -- notably in Rubasingham's powerfully staged electioneering scene -- the more naive and less plausible the character grows. Agbaje is intent upon raising the stakes via the manipulations of power-broking local Chief Olowolaye (charismatic Richard Pepple) but although the resulting bribery and violence ring horribly true, the thinly written narrative is too contrived for the climax to carry its intended weight. , ,Agbaje's 2008 debut, written when she was 26, won her an Olivier award. Although the whole is less satisfying than its parts, "Belong" is further proof of talent. Rubasingham's beautifully balanced cast reveal the immediacy of the writing that creates real connection between audience and material. , ,**** ,??TimeOut by Bella Todd, 8 May 2012?? , ,In 'Dreams from My Father', Barack Obama talks about the tragedy of a 'divided soul', torn between continents. This is the central dilemma of 'Belong', in which a British MP, sore from election defeat, quits Croydon to set up as the 'Obama of Nigeria'. Olivier-winner Bola Agbaje's co-commission for the Royal Court and African company Tiata Fahodzi buzzes with dynamic characters under the brilliant direction of Indhu Rubasingham. , ,So it's significant that, when not moonwalking for his mother or electrifying the marketplace with his oratory, Lucian Msamati's Kayode seems curiously empty. Leaving behind the council estates of previous hits 'Gone Too Far!' and 'Off the Endz', Agbaje opens in Kayode and his wife Rita's middle-class pad. , ,Little change is needed for the switch to a westernised Nigeria, where Pamela Nomvete's Mama greets her prodigal son with a set of designer handbags as loud as her disapprobation and her love, and Richard Pepple's corrupt Chief Olowolaye - a pantomime villain with crocodile shoes to match his smile - announces that he follows Kayode on Twitter. , ,Is nationality a question of birthplace or skin colour? Is the future of a troubled country best shaped by those who stayed or those who left? Having packed in the provocative questions along with the belly laughs - and one almighty parting gut-punch - 'Belong' leaves us questioning. One thing is for sure though, this talented young writer belongs firmly in the vanguard of contemporary British theatre. ,

Ticket Information: Mondays all seats £10 (available on the day of perf from 9am online, 10am in-person.) ,Concessions £5 off (available in advance for all performances until 5 May inclusive and all matinees. For all other performances, available on a standby basis on the day) ,School and HE Groups of 8+ 50% off (available Tuesday–Friday) ,Access £12 (plus a companion at the same rate)

1 June - 30 June 2012

£20. Mondays all seats £10.

Production Company: The Royal Court Theatre Presents

Playwright: By Vivienne Franzmann

Lead Quote: ‘Sometimes when I think of going back, I feel like I could run there. It’s like I'm being called back. I know it sounds ridiculous. And sometimes I don't give a shit about any of it and I just want to stack shelves for the rest of my life.’

Sponsors: a:1:{i:0;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:2:"65";s:7:"caption";s:0:"";s:5:"order";s:0:"";}}

22 June - 04 Aug 2012

£28, £20, £12. Mondays all seats £10.

Production Company: The Royal Court Theatre Presents

Playwright: by Joe Penhall

Lead Quote: ‘- Men can take the pain , ,- No you can't, that's just the myth they sell you.' ,

Ticket Information: Mondays all seats £10 (available on the day of perf from 9am online, 10am in-person.) ,Concessions £5 off top two prices (available in advance for all performances until 30 June inclusive and all matinees. For all other performances, available on a standby basis on the day) ,25s and under £8 (ID required, not bookable online) ,School and HE Groups of 8+ 50% off top two prices (available Tuesday–Friday) ,Groups of 6+ £5 off top price (available Tuesday–Friday) ,Access £12 (plus a companion at the same rate) , ,Performances from 27 July take place during the London Olympics, so please check your travel routes in advance to make sure you can get to and from the Royal Court safely. The Society of London Theatre (SOLT) and Transport for London (TfL) have released a special travel guide for theatre goers during this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is available on the "Official London Theatre website":www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/theatre2012 and on the "TfL website":www.tfl.gov.uk/london2012.

16 May - 28 July 2012

Lead Quote: 133 word plays in The Bussey Building / CLF Art Cafe, 133 Rye Lane, Peckham

Thurs 16 August - Sat 3 November 2012

£52.50, £45.00, £35.00, £25.00, £15.00. Premiums £75.00

Production Company: Royal Court Theatre Productions and Ambassador Theatre Group Present the Royal Court Theatre production of

Playwright: by April De Angelis

Lead Quote: ‘You’re having some kind of crisis.’ ,‘It’s called being 50. You must be having it too.’ ,

Reviews: Reviews from the Original Production: , ,**** ,??The Mail On Sunday, By Georgina Brown, 30th October 2011?? , ,Mike Leigh’s devastating new play, Grief, at the National Theatre, is about a mother and her 15-year-old daughter failing to bridge the generation gap during the Fifties. Victoria wants a duffel coat and uses that awful new word ‘OK’. Her mother wants her baby back. , ,At the Royal Court, April de Angelis’s screamingly funny and moving middle-class family drama, Jumpy, brings the situation right up to date. Tilly, also 15, dresses like a hooker and is sleeping with her boyfriend. Her mother wants another glass of anaesthetising wine. , ,Both plays end with a gunshot, but Jumpy, mercifully, is a comedy, with de Angelis evidently more optimistic than Leigh that parents and offspring can get through the trial of the teenage years and emerge more or less intact. , ,Needless to say, Hilary, in an outstanding performance by Tamsin Greig, spends much of the play weeping. She is feeling battered by being 50, by being made redundant, by her daughter who disgusts her, by a stale marriage and by the failure of her husband to stand up to their daughter. , ,Her best friend Frances thinks that becoming a burlesque dancer is a way to rage against the dying of the light and, indeed, to boost her sex appeal. Doon Mackichan, dressed to thrill in a leather corset, stamping her high-heeled hoof and waggling the ponytail attached to her bottom, couldn’t be more hilariously embarrassing. , ,While the title of the play refers to Tilly’s beloved cuddly toy monkey, who shares her bed with her and the boyfriend, it also describes Hilary’s rattled state of mind. She wants to accept her daughter’s sexualisation and precocious ways – two of the many volcanic changes in society since she was a frumpy feminist protesting at Greenham Common - but it’s a terrible struggle. , ,In a feeble attempt to keep tabs on a situation that she lost control of long ago, she insists that the boyfriend stays at their house, thereby subjecting herself and her husband to some noisy nights. , ,When Tilly becomes pregnant, she says her daughter must decide what to do, but of course, in her wretched heart of hearts she longs to lay down the law. , ,Greig is quite brilliant at expressing the gap between what she says and how she feels. Nina Raine’s punchy production would be even more bruising if the men – Tilly’s father (in the blinds business, which says everything) and the boyfriend’s dad (a philandering flake of an actor) – were as well drawn. , ,But Bel Powley’s Tilly exudes toxic teenage egotism from every pore, her nose in her texts as she strops around telling her mother how wrinkly her neck is. , ,I heard several people in the audience claiming that De Angelis must have had an ear to their door. Certainly, she hits a thousand nerves and makes the audience giggle, gasp and groan in painful recognition. It must transfer to the West End. , ,**** ,??Financial Times, By Sarah Hemming, 21st October 2011?? , ,There’s a large bed lurking behind a screen on the set for April De Angelis’s Jumpy at the Royal Court. It seems symbolic. Sex looms large in this entertaining and perceptive comedy about modern living. Too much, too little, too soon, too late – what happens, or doesn’t happen, in the bedroom frazzles the nerves of all the characters, but particularly those of Hilary. As a 50-year-old woman, she is struggling to keep several shows on the road: her job, her marriage, her body and her relationship with her 15-year-old daughter. , ,Tamsin Greig is outstanding in this wittily and sympathetically drawn part. On her first entrance, pale and harassed, she makes straight for the wine without removing her coat. Instantly, she has your affection and she holds it throughout, as her character tries to hang on to her liberal and feminist principles, while navigating the unfamiliar waters of ageing, insecurity and a child’s precarious transition to adulthood. Her marriage to Mark (Ewan Stewart) has settled into something comfortable but unexciting, like an old winter coat, while her daughter, Tilly (Bel Powley), has transformed into a scowling, scantily dressed stranger, who is discovering the joys of sex, loudly, with similarly under-aged Josh. , ,Hilary, who protested at Greenham Common in her own youth, is bewildered and aghast at the gap between her values and those of her daughter. What should she do? De Angelis explores this question in a series of droll, wonderfully observed scenes, as Hilary takes on Josh’s venomous mother (Sarah Woodward) and egocentric father (Richard Lintern) and confides in her long-time girlfriend Frances (Doon Mackichan, raunchily funny). These encounters are sharply delivered in Nina Raine’s production, sending ripples of agonised recognition round the auditorium. “I never let myself go,” declares Frances. “Neither have I,” mumbles Hilary, through a mouthful of crisps. The temperature gradually changes, however, as relationships begin to buckle and the problems become more acute. , ,The second half drops off a bit: there are rather too many plot-twists, some of them bizarre and unlikely. And some of the characterisation is extreme. But still this is a compassionate, very funny and finally moving play about modern living. Behind the laughs, De Angelis quietly raises some serious questions about how we parent, grow up and grow old, and contributes to the ongoing exploration at this theatre of the difficulty of holding on to principles in a changing world. , ,**** ,??Metro, By Claire Allfree, 21st October 2011?? , ,What happened to the Greenham Common Women? In the case of Tamsin Greig’s Hilary, they got saddled with a marriage, that’s run out of steam, a promiscuous teenage daughter who doesn’t even know what Greenham Common was and a job market that thinks you’re over the hill at 50. , ,April de Angelis’s acidically funny new play is a sideways glance at the legacy of 1970s feminism masquerading as a sitcom-style comedy about a midlife crisis, and given a sparkling production from Nina Raine. , ,Greig proves she can do way more than funny as the touchingly beleaguered Hilary, trying to manage Bel Powley’s superbly brattish Tilly (oversexed and underage), while also wondering how to kick-start a marriage in which sex has given way to reading Dickens aloud in bed. , ,She has great on-stage chemistry, too, with Doon Mackichan, Hilary’s actress best friend Frances who, in the name of ‘sexual empowerment’, has developed a totally terrifying burlesque act in a desperate attempt to revive her career. , ,Modern feminism is full of mixed messages, is Angelis’s point – and no more so than for today’s teenage girls. And if this play is more about the diagnosis than the solution, it’s so sharp on the minefield of modern parenting (in which liberal values come up alarmingly short) and so rich in the firecracker one liners, that you end up forgiving it. , ,**** ,??The Daily Telegraph, By Charles Spenser, 20th October 2011?? , ,The Royal Court - on a roll with Jerusalem now enjoying a second run in the West End - has another hit on its hands with April De Angelis’s new play, Jumpy. , ,It’s funny, deliciously rude and at times piercingly moving, and stars that superb comic actress Tamsin Greig, giving a performance to match her award-winning Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing for the RSC a few years ago. , ,This time, however, the play is bang up to date and will make any parent with a teenager in the family laugh with recognition, wince with horror and, if you are as soft as I am, cry a little too. , ,Greig plays Hilary who once protested at Greenham Common but is now a married, 50-year- old middle class London mum with a shop-owner husband ( Ewan Stewart) and a stroppy 15-year-old daughter who dresses like a prostitute and is discovered to be sleeping with her boyfriend (also 15). Needless to say the wayward young Tilly treats her anxious Mum with cruel contempt. , ,On one level this is a classic mid-life crisis play. Hilary experiences panic attacks on the Tube, worries that she might lose her job with a literacy support group and when she gets back from the shops is desperate for a glass of wine or three. , ,It’s also a portrait of a marriage where passion, if not affection, has long since run dry, and it reaches breaking point as the couple agonise over their daughter, whose stroppiness and promiscuity become a major cause for concern. , ,There are scenes here which will strike a chord of recognition with any parents who have tried to talk seriously to their teenage children only to find that the blighters are far more interested in perusing their text messages, and to any couple for whom the idea of sex after a long day at work is simply too exhausting to contemplate. , ,But there are also wonderful scenes of comedy in which Hilary runs up against the gorgon mother of the youth who has deflowered her daughter (a splendidly acidic turn from Sarah Woodward) only to discover that the gorgon’s husband, a self-regarding actor, is hitting on her. , ,There were many moments when Jumpy made me snort with laughter, not least when Hilary’s best friend (Doon Mackichan), a man hungry-actress desperate to defy the ravages of time, shows off the excruciatingly embarrassing burlesque routine that she fondly hopes will revive her flagging career. , ,But though the laughs keep coming the play movingly captures the inequality of love between parents and their children, and there is no mistaking the emotional truth of the writing. , ,Greig is superb, brilliantly combining scenes of exasperated comedy with moments of exhausted despair, and the scenes with her daughter, played with a spot–on mixture of insolence and vulnerability by Bel Powley are beautifully true and touching. , ,Nina Raine’s production deftly blends the play’s comedy and deeper feeling while De Angelis’s keeps you guessing how it will all turn out until the very end. , ,**** ,??The Times, By Libby Purves, 20th October 2011?? , ,Writers of contemporary stage comedies have a problem: we are used to good TV sitcoms. So when you present two women bemoaning 50th birthdays, one single and desperate, one with a teenager and dull husband, then add a handsome divorcing neighbour — well, you see the trap. We mustn’t feel as if we might as well stay home with a DVD. It has to be chokingly funny, or embrace surreal flashbacks, or deepen and darken into greater significance. Not easy. , ,So a bouquet to playwright April De Angelis, and to Nina Raine’s deft direction. In Jumpy, they tick all three boxes, and express a female predicament without whining. Tamsin Greig is perfect as the mother, Hilary, misty-eyed about Greenham, losing her job in a literacy project and married to Mark, a furnishings salesman who was once a fiery art student (ah, life’s attrition!). Their daughter parties a lot and doesn’t revise. , ,The 15-year-old Tilly is played with magnificent stalking defiance by Bel Powley in maximum eyeliner and minimum clothes. She has a placid pregnant pal, wonderfully realised by Seline Hizli, whose boy isn’t around “cos he’s dead, innhe?”. Stabbed. Tilly has embarked on sex; Hilary and Mark are terribly modern and discuss the “issues” with the boy’s parents, a chill furious she-banker and a shallow charming actor (Richard Lintern gleefully plays to everyone’s idea of how actors behave). In a fabulous moment Tilly confronts her mother with rage at this interference, drawing the best laugh of the evening with a horrified “What did you wear?” But she’s a child: she bewails a break-up with “his name’s all over my humanities folder, it really hurts!” The cast should adjust their timing: laughs were so loud on the first night that some top lines were drowned. , ,The climax of Act I — Lizzie Clachan’s bare domestic set having opened rather beautifully to a seaside panorama — involve five priceless minutes that I must not spoil, except to say with a shudder that Doon Mackichan as the single friend illustrates the dire effect that Madonna and Lady Gaga have had on the stiff-knee generation. , ,The second act flies beyond sitcom without losing comic pace. Things happen and questions tease: do middle-aged parents confuse moral and safety concerns with secret envy? Is it all right to sag a bit and stay married out of cowardice? Cleverly, there are three moments which could end it: one darkly farcical, one sentimentally tender, the last a truthful, funny tribute to love and resignation. , ,**** ,??The Evening Standard, By Henry Hitchings, 20th October 2011?? , ,Tamsin Greig is a superb comic performer, and in this new play by April De Angelis she's on top form. As middle-class mother Hilary, exhausted by parenthood and everyday anxieties, she is blissfully funny but also genuinely moving. , ,Hilary's is a hollow existence, and Lizzie Clachan's bare set suggests this perfectly: everything personal and interesting is tucked away in cupboards, allowing the living space to be maintained in a state of bleached banality. , ,It's a laboratory for angst and brisk, nervy conversation. Hilary's husband Mark (Ewan Stewart) is inert, and her work seems noble but tiring; she'd rather glug white wine and exchange pungent opinions with her sassy, yet often laughable, friend Frances. , ,Above all she is shocked and fascinated by her strident, sulky daughter Tilly, who is 15 and full of worldly contempt. The interest is not reciprocated. Hilary is appalled by the provocative way her daughter dresses, which she associates - rightly, as it turns out - with the risk of her getting into trouble with boys. Tilly, played with gut-wrenching precision by Bel Powley, reserves her energy for ridiculing her mother's taste in jeans. , ,Tilly's relationship with morose-looking Josh brings Hilary into contact with parents whose approach is very different from her own: steely Bea (an excellent Sarah Woodward) and flirtatious actor Roland (the well-cast Richard Lintern). , ,Misunderstandings proliferate, and Nina Raine's snappy production accentuates the first half's rich comedy. In the second the intensity drops, as the writing takes improbable and unsatisfying turns - including some ludicrous business with a gun. Yet the humour remains. , ,This is a shrewdly observed picture of midlife crisis and the travails of marriage, as well as a striking depiction of the gap - in both time and ideology - between women such as Hilary, who camped at Greenham Common, and their daughters, whose lives revolve around Facebook, texting and nightclubs. , ,Doon Mackichan's supple Frances, who is blessed with a lot of the zingiest lines, declares "Being a woman and getting old is a disaster". De Angelis puts this claim to the test. The play's politics are slight, and its feminism isn't exactly heavyweight. But for the most part it's perceptive, vigorous and entertaining. , ,**** ,??Daily Express, By Simon Edge, 20th October 2011?? , ,When Hilary was a student she mad day trips to Greenham Common and dreamed of a utopian future. Now She’s 50, about to lose her job and has a husband who won’t tell her she could pass for 43 even to cheer her up. Worse, she has a tearaway teenage daughter. April De Angelis’ cruelly funny new play focuses on the agony of a particular generation of women.Coming from a right-on, sexually liberated generation who kicked against the repressive morals of their own parents, they struggle to cope with the rampant precocity of their daughters. , ,In one scene Hilary and her unsupportive husband Mark sit with clenched teeth listening to the bouncing bed springs as 15-year-old Tilly couples loudly in the next room, because at least they know where she is. It’s left to Roland, the father of Tilly’s on-off boyfriend Josh, to voice the obvious forbidden thought when he explodes: “All this liberal s***_ we should just beat them senseless like our parents did”. Packed with smart one-liners and horribly keen observation, the play is a vehicle for the impressive talents of Tamsin Greig, of TV’s Green Wing. , ,With her tombstone face and empty black eyes, she gets right into Hilary’s harrowed, affection-craving soul yet manages to dig comedy out of the angst. She is magnificently supported by Doon MacKichan, of Smack the Pony, as her man-eating best friend Frances. Bel Powley brings flashes of vulnerability to the bratty Tilly, while Seline Hizli is irrepressibly cheery as her dim friend Lyndsey. Ewan Stewart and Richard Lintern provide solid support as Mark and Roland, even if this is not a play to over-concern itself with male characters. Directed by Nina Raine and designed by Lizzie Clachan – her minimalist North London interior cunningly unfolds into a Norfork beach – this is a rapier-sharp comedy that will ring horribly true with the parents of teenagers. , ,??The Guardian, by Michael Billington, 20th October 2011?? , ,April de Angelis has written a funny, generous play about a woman – a left-leaning feminist who once protested at Greenham Common – facing a crisis at the age of 50. , ,In the old days, the heroine would be a harassed Knightsbridge mother coping with a reluctant debutante daughter and a philandering husband. In De Angelis's version, the protagonist, Hilary, lives in Walthamstow and has to deal with the likely loss of her job in education, a dwindling marriage and a mutinous teenage daughter. Once upon a time, a crisis would arise when the daughter would burst in through the french windows and breathlessly announce: "Mummy, I think I'm preggers." Although today the language is more blunt, the action still hinges on how Hilary, now separated from her husband, confronts the problem of dealing with her impregnated offspring. , ,Even if, at heart, the play is deeply traditional, it shows a sharp awareness of the plight of the modern middle-aged woman. De Angelis's Hilary knows what she doesn't want to be: a sexually aggressive figure like her friend, Frances, who at one point launches into a deeply embarrassing burlesque routine. But it is Hilary's uncertainty as to how she should behave that gives the play its bounce. There's a very funny scene when Hilary, hoping to read Great Expectations to her husband in bed, is driven frantic by the sound of creaking springs from her daughter's adjacent room. And, as Hilary's marriage declines, she handles the sexual advances of a predatory actor with a mixture of fascination and alarm. Like all De Angelis's heroines, she is torn, as Dominic Dromgoole once pointed out, between empowerment and debilitation. , ,This makes the role an ideal vehicle for Tamsin Greig, who has a natural gift for conveying strength and vulnerability at the same time. She has the air of a tough cookie, yet looks suitably shamefaced when forced by her best friend to dress as a French maid and guiltily evades the glances of a boy student who lovingly tends her wounded leg. Where other actors take you by storm, Greig conquers by stealth. She is well supported by Doon Mackichan as her sexually adventurous confidante, Bel Powley as her chippy daughter and Richard Lintern as her neurotic suitor, while Nina Raine's direction is crisp, clear and confident. But, although the play visibly works, I still scented a strong whiff of the Shaftesbury Avenue of yesteryear. , ,*Education workshops available. For more information please visit our Education Section* ,

Ticket Information: Tickets £52.50, £45.00, £35.00, £25.00, £15.00 ,Premium seats £75 ,Seniors £39.50 Mon - Thurs (£29.50 on the day) ,Students £25 Wednesday matinee ,Groups 8+ £39.50 Mon - Thurs ,Schools 10+ £45/£35 reduced to £19.50 Mon-Thurs ,Access rate £15 - £52.50 , ,20 Day Seats are available for every performance from 10am at the Duke Of York's Theatre, St Martin's Lane. Maximum of 2 per person, £10 each. , ,Performances 29 August - 8 September take place during the London Paralympics, so please check your travel routes in advance to make sure you can get to and from the Duke of York's Theatre safely. The Society of London Theatre (SOLT) and Transport for London (TfL) have released a special travel guide for theatre goers during this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is available on the "Official London Theatre website":www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/theatre2012 and on the "TfL website":www.tfl.gov.uk/london2012. ,

Marketable Venue Title: Duke of York's Theatre, St. Martin's Lane, WC2N 4BG