Ben Allen Archives - North West End UK

There is something genuinely refreshing about The Urmetazoan. At a time when theatre can sometimes feel like it needs to announce the scale of its ideas, Alex Rugman's play approaches questions of science, space travel, human survival and the future of the species through something much more intimate: two sisters who have not spoken to each other for seven years. Alice, played by Dorothea Myer-Bennethtt, is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist preparing for a one-way mission to Mars, where she will work towards establishing a human population. Abigail, played by Meghan Treadway, has taken a very different route through life. She is impulsive, carefree and much more interested in living in the present. Alice has spent her life looking towards the future, while Abigail is concerned with the me...

Radiant Boy is a unique, evocative, and intensely personal play that explores a young man’s relationship with his mother, his sexuality, and his faith. Russell has returned home after a ‘sickness’ prevented him from continuing his singing training in London. Unsure of how else to help Russell, his mother Maud has called a Priest who specialises in supernatural occurrences. Part kitchen-sink drama, part Exorcist style horror, Nancy Netherwood’s script effortlessly moves from understated but heartfelt conversations between a mother and son one moment and a dramatic exorcism the next. Her use of music, particularly traditional folk and New Wave, not only add to the atmosphere of the play but also embody Russell’s internal struggle. As Netherwood says in her Playwright’s note, folk and New Wav...

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The Urmetazoan – Hampstead Theatre

Radiant Boy: A Haunting – Southwark Playhouse Borough