Marjorie Prime is an American play by Jordan Harrison, that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. The play is set in the mid-21st century. Tess (Lucy Bell) is caring for her ageing mother Marjorie (Maggie Dence). Marjorie is beginning to experience a creeping dementia. Jon (Richard Sydenham), Tess’ husband, has contacted a…
The Alan Ayckbourn play Taking Steps, written in 1979, is the 24th opus from his ‘genius’. He’s now completed some 79 plays, the last one – so far – called Roundelay, in 2014. Taking Steps is part of a faithful commitment by The Ensemble Theatre to his work and underlines the entertainment value that he inevitably…
Lip Service is a new Australian play that premiered in a separate production in London earlier this year with the title: Madame Rubenstein. That production featured the indomitable Miriam Margolyes, as Rubinstein and Frances Barber, as Elizabeth Arden. At the Ensemble we have Amanda Muggelton playing Madame Rubinstein, and it is a performance that I…
The Plant, by Kit Brookman, is the winner of the Ensemble Theatre’s 2016 New Writing Commission. Sue (Sandy Gore) and her three children, Erin (Helen Dallimore), Daniel (Garth Holcombe) and Naomi (Briallen Clarke) are packing up the family home not long after the death of the husband/father from, what one of them describe as: ‘in-built…
e-baby is a new Australian play by Jane Cafarella, for two women, seen first in Melbourne, last year. The play charts a surrogacy pregnancy. We first meet Catherine (Danielle Carter), a 46 year-old, ex-pat Australian, living the ‘dream’ as a high-flying lawyer based in London, with a practice in New York, who after trying with…
Betrayal, by Harold Pinter was written in 1978, and belongs to his great middle period, and along with other works like No Man’s Land (1975) and Old Times, is often characterised as one of his ‘memory plays’. Pinter was given the Nobel prize for Literature in 2005. This play uses reverse chronology, and so the…
Good People, by David Lindsay-Abaire was first performed in 2013 for the Manhattan Theatre Club, at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, on Broadway, New York and was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, The Horton Foote Prize, The Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, and two Tony nominations. It follows…
