Gods Are Fallen And All Safety Gone, Bike Shed Theatre, June 3rd and 4th, £7
As part of Exeter’s Ignite Festival, celebrating the theatre of the regional capital, Bike Shed Theatre plays host to Greyscale’s Gods Are Fallen And All Safety Gone on June 3rd and 4th. We watch four repeating conversations between a mother and a daughter explore what happens when we discover our parents are flawed human beings.
Already staged at Oran Mor, Glasgow, Moscow and the Almeida Festival as a work-in-progress in 2012, this intimate, funny and playful work repeats four conversations that take place as a fully grown daughter (Scott Turnbull) visits her ageing mother (Sean Campion).
Written and directed by Selena Dimitrijevic, who has worked in a wide range of theatrical styles and forms, the conversations reflect the typical dialogue between two family members: about a bath, a cup of tea, Annie’s boyfriend, and Mum’s refusal to socialise with Annie’s aunt. Each time the scene is revisited and restaged, a new note of emotion is introduced, from an angry retort to a needling question, thwarted expectation or swallowed disappointment, slowly revealing the irrefutable bond holding these two people closer together than anyone else.
The mother and daughter characters are both played by men, but mirrored on stage by a real mother and daughter who will be recruited local to each venue and invited to attend rehearsal. Their presence could be read as a kind of theatrical job-share, as the men speak the lines, which the women offer the physical manifestation, although they are not directed. They provide a vital counterpoint to the work of the actors, as the emotional truth at the heart of the piece.
The production is part of a national tour which starts on May 13th at Brighton and ends on June 6th in Ipswich.
Listing Information
Running Time: 45 mins | Suitable for all ages, some strong language
Tuesday 3rd June, 9:10pm
Wednesday 4th June, 3:20pm
Greyscale Information
Facebook | @GreyscaleTC | #GodsAreFallen | www.greyscale.org.uk