Paines Plough Blog

As we often report on this blog, here at PPHQ we see a lot of theatre, right across the UK. We’re only a small team of five, but we try our best to see as much as possible – especially stuff we receive lovely hand-written invitations to. Because the playwright is at the heart of all our work, we prioritise seeing new plays. But we are always desperate to see the work of actors, designers, directors and producers who we are excited by.

Since the beginning of January we’ve been averaging 3.7 shows a week and have seen some fantastic theatre, including:

Some West End fare -
LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT by Eugene O’Neill at The Apollo
THE LADYKILLERS by Graham Linehan at the Gielgud Theatre
MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET at the Noel Coward Theatre
HUIS CLOS by Jean Paul Satre at Trafalgar Studios
HAYFEVER by Noel Coward at the Noel Coward
GHOST The Musical at the Picadilly
MATILDA by Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin at the Cambridge
SINGIN IN THE RAIN at the Palace
WOMAN IN BLACK at the Fortune
SHREK at Drury Lane.

An adaptation -
DON JUAN COMES BACK FROM THE WAR by Ödön von Horváth in a new version by Duncan Macmillan at the Finborough Theatre.

A bit of dance and physical theatre -
THE TALENT by Ballet Boyz at Richmond Theatre
CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS? By DV8 at the National Theatre

Some Shakespeare -
RICHARD II at the Donmar Warhouse
A MIDSUMMERNIGHTS DREAM by Filter at the Lyric Hammersmith
COMEDY OF ERRORS at the National Theatre
A WINTER’S TALE by Propeller on tour at Sheffield Lyceum.

Some out-of-London shows -
CLEANSED/CRAVE/4.48 PSYCHOSIS by Sarah Kane at Munich Kammerspiele (in Germany)
THE WAY OF THE WORLD by William Congreve at the Crucible Theatre Sheffield
THE MICHAEL FRAYN SEASON (Benefactors, Copenhagen, and Democracy) at Sheffield Theatres
WHERE HAVE I BEEN ALL MY LIFE by Alyecky Blythe at the New Vic in Stoke.

A few revivals -
THE LADY FROM THE SEA by Henrik Ibsen at The Rose Kingston
ONE FLEW OVER THE COCKOOS NEST by Ken Kesey at LOST Theatre
BINGO by Edward Bond at The Young Vic
THREEPENNY OPERA by Bertolt Brecht at Wilton’s Music Hall (LAMDA show)
THE CHANGELING by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley at the Young Vic
AFTER MISS JULIE by Patrick Marber at the Young Vic
NOSIES OFF by Michael Frayn at the Old Vic
HOUSE OF BERNADA ALBA by Federico Garcia Lorca at Almeida
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER by Oliver Goldsmith at the National Theatre
THE RECRUTING OFFICER by George Farquar at the Donmar Warehouse.

A bit of devised work -
YOUR LAST BREATH by Curious Directive at the Pleasance Islington
WE HOPE YOU’RE ARE HAPPY (WHY WOULD WE LIE?) by Made in China at BAC
THE DEVIL AND MR PUNCH by Improbable at the Barbican
MASTER AND MARGARITA by Michail Bulgakov at the Barbican.

And of course lots of new plays -
IN BASILDON by David Eldrige at the Royal Court
MOGADISHU by Vivienne Franzmann at the Lyric Hammersmith
HAUNTED CHILD by Joe Penhall at the Royal Court
LOVESONG by Abi Morgan at the Lyric Hammersmith
CONSTELLATIONS by Nick Payne at the Royal Court
nabokov’s MONEY at the Old Vic Tunnels
The nabokov Arts Club at BAC
The Angle Plays at The Bush
AND NO MORE SHALL WE PART by Tom Holloway at Hampstead Theatre
OUR NEW GIRL by Nancy Harris at The Bush
SEX WITH A STRANGER by Stefan Goloszewski at Trafalgar Studios
LAY DOWN YOUR CROSS by Nick Payne at Hampstead Theatre
GOODBYE TO ALL THAT by Luke Norris at the Royal Court
SHIVERED by Philip Ridley at Southwark Playhouse
JERUSALEM by Jez Butterworth at The Apollo
MATHEMATICS OF THE HEART by Kefi Chadwick at Theatre 503
THE OH FUCK MOMENT by Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe at the Soho Theatre
SHALLOW SLUMBER by Chris Lee at the Soho Theatre
REASONS TO BE PRETTY by Neil La Bute at the Almeida
THE BEE By Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan at Soho Theatre.

What have you been seeing and what can’t we afford to miss in the coming months?

Next week sees the opening of curious directive’s hit Edinburgh show YOUR LAST BREATH at the Pleasance in London. This makes everyone at Paines Plough feel quite warm and fuzzy inside because the curious directive team is headed by two PP alumni- Jack Lowe and Sophie Larsmon. Jack and Sophie met whilst studying at Birkbeck and then both gained placements to work here at 43 Aldwych as Trainee Director and Trainee Producer respectively and thus their collaboration on YOUR LAST BREATH was born.

curious directive's YOUR LAST BREATH at Pleasance, Islington

1876 – Christopher leaves his young family behind to work in Norway. He will map the uncharted mountains for the very first time.

1999 – Anna’s body freezes after an extreme-skiing accident and her heart stops. But doctors gradually warm her until it miraculously starts beating again.

2011 – Freija, a successful business woman, has just lost her father. She travels to scatter his ashes in Norway.

2034 – Nicholas explains a medical breakthrough which saved his life as a baby, whereby the human body can be ‘suspended in animation.’

Spanning 150 years, curious directive fuse movement, live piano score and video to unravel the landscapes of the heart and our own personal geographies.

Have a gander at the YOUR LAST BREATH trailer here

And here’s the latest video blog from the curious directive team on tour.

After winning the SCOTSMAN 2011 FRINGE FIRST at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer the show was re-mounted for a 23 date UK tour and is now arriving at the Pleasance, Islington next week.

The whole PP gang will be heading that way next week to catch up on the fruits of Jack and Sophie’s post PP collaboration so see you there!

It’s been a busy Autumn for Paines Plough, with shows on in Sheffield, Glasgow, Manchester and Coventry simultaneously but despite our team being split all over the country we’ve still managed to catch plenty of theatre all over the shop and the festive period is looking pretty good for our culture calendar too…

James and I caught Tom Wells’ brilliant new play The Kitchen Sink at the Bush on press night.  It’s selling out but the run has been extended til 23^rd Dec, so there’s still chance to catch this extraordinary new play.

Claire and Hanna loved April de Angelis’ JUMPY at the Royal Court, Tara caught Polar Bear’s OLD ME at the Roundhouse and we all went on a PP office social to see OFFICE PARTY at the Pleasance which was an absolute hoot!

We were big fans of Michael Sheen’s HAMLET at the Young Vic, Jez Butterworth’s JERUSALEM (it just gets better…) at the Apollo, BLACKBERRY TROUT FACE by the superb Laurence Wilson (who wrote TINY VOLCANOES which we toured earlier this year), and ONE MAN TWO GUVNORS by Richard Bean at the Adelphi.

We’re very excited about seeing COMEDY OF ERRORS with Lenny Henry and directed by Dominic Cooke at the National, I’m off to see Michael Grandage’s last show at the helm of the Donmar- RICHARD II with Eddie Redmayne at the weekend and James saw Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin’s hit adaptation of MATILDA at the Cambridge Theatre and can still be found humming the songs around the office…

Last week Claire and Tara headed up to Sheffield (quickly becoming our second home) to see the Crucible’s revival of Sondheim’s COMPANY with Daniel Evans and Samantha Spiro which was brilliantly entertaining! And speaking of Sheffield we had a great time there two weeks ago when the whole team got together to see our ROUNDABOUT season; Nick Payne’s ONE DAY WHEN WE WERE YOUNG, Duncan Macmillan’s LUNGS and THE SOUND OF HEAVY RAIN by Penelope Skinner.

So what are we seeing over Christmas? Our panto withdrawal from last year will be soothed by trips to ALADDIN at the Lyric Hammersmith and SLEEPING BEAUTY at Sheffield’s Lyceum. We’ll be at the National next week for Daniel Kitson’s IT’S ALWAYS RIGHT NOW, UNTIL IT’S LATER which I’ve been dying to see since it debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe back in 2010. Claire’s off to see Matthew Bourne’s NUTCRACKER at Sadler’s Wells on Tuesday and Tara will be going to Kurt Weill’s MAGICAL NIGHT at the Royal Opera House later this week. Other treats in store are Reuben Johnson’s THE PROPOSAL produced by exciting young company Fiddy West Productions at Theatre 503, Joe Penhall’s HAUNTED CHILD at the Royal Court and Dawn King’s FOXFINDER at The Finborough.

Wowzer, there’s a whole lot of theatre for you.

What have you been seeing? Any top tips for theatre trips over Christmas?

Here at Forward Theatre Project we are gearing up for our third scratch night, Scratch My City which is going to be at the Soho Theatre on Sunday 30th October. Our scratch nights started about a year ago now, a few months after we had been made anassociate company of Paines Plough. Paines Plough were a great support in helping us create a formula for our scratch nights – being a collective of 25 theatre directors,writers and designers, we were concerned with how the scratch nights could be used to help us build relationships within the collective, but also not always become a writer-led event. After a few trial and errors, and mentorship from George and James about how Scratch My City could develop, each time we are feeling happier about, finding the winning formula. One thing has remained constant with Scratch My City, and that is that it has always been a ‘venture into cross-region collaboration.’ One of FTP’s main aims is to create a community amongst peers and to build relationships between peers from all around the UK. With so many exciting emerging theatre companies working all around the country, we decided that Scratch My City would always involve a collaboration with another emerging theatre company who were based somewhere else in the UK.

 This time, we are really excited to be working with Left Luggage Theatre who are a designer-led company from Newcastle. Left Luggage have inspired us to do a designer-led scratch night for our next Scratch My City. After many a discussion with Left Luggage, FTP designers and FTP artists, we settled on exploring the idea of reversing the traditional theatre-making process. Typically, designers are given a play text to work on – in this text there will be certain things that the designer has to adhere to, for instance, if it is a play set in a cottage in Devon in the 1980s, this is already stipulated for them before they begin their design. So what we have decided to do is explore beginning the process with the design. Our design team are currently reading ‘Sorry Tales’ by Mick Jackson – a collection of macabre and idiosyncratic short stories that they are going to use to fuel a design concept or idea. These four design ideas are then being given to each of our four scratch groups (director-writer teams) who will then create a short piece of theatre which adheres to, inspires and uses one of these designs. The clearest example I can offer is one designer who gave the example of being interested in creating a visual time restriction on stage. He said he might give a group the design of several guillotines hanging in the space which all fall down at different times, and by the time the last one has fallen, the piece should be over. Eek…what are we letting ourselves in for?!

It is a complete experiment for us, but we are excited to see what may come out of it and we have a great line up of artists involved including directors Ellen McDougall, Jacqui Honess-Martin and Derek Bond, writers Ben Ellis, Alison Carr, Frazer Flintham and Gabriel Bisset-Smith and of course our wonderful Left Luggage Design team Verity Quinn, Anna Harding and Alison Garner.
One of the things we aim for in our scratch nights is high-quality production values. So all performances are off-book and as rehearsed as possible before the big day. This means the classic scenario of all groups trying to scramble around for rehesarsal space, casting through our casting director Fran Bradley and pulling everything together. It is at times like these that we are reminded of how valuable Paines Plough is as a support to the company. Not only because of the guidance and support they offer in terms of creatively developing the project but also practical support. Access to a central London rehearsal space with a toilet and a kettle is a god-send! As SMC is currently unfunded, being able to offer casts a nice and accessible space to rehearse is so much better than dragging them all the way to your living room in Balham!

Without Paines Plough’s generous support I think the scratch nights would not attract the same high quality artists or productions. The associate company status has also proved of great personal benefit to me over the past few months too. Sometimes I can tell myself that sitting at my laptop on my bed is working and productive, but some times (and this might not be helped by the fact that my bedroom is literally a bed-in-aroom) it just isn’t. Being able to bring my laptop and work at a desk space in an office environment has literally saved my work soul and means I am so much more productive. Also, excitingly, we have just been given our first grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to produce a project at York Theatre Royal next year (woop woop!) So over the next 6 months the whole company will be leaning on Paines Plough for more support as we prepare for this launching and running.

So, back to Scratch My City – we are getting ready to launch this Thursday night with all the teams coming together with their design packs and pairings and getting ready for a ‘on your marks, get set, go!’ scenario. It will be something new. It will be untested. Untried. A bit of an adventure. I cannot wait.

See you there, Soho Theatre cabaret space Sunday 30th October 7.45pm, www.sohotheatre.com
Charlotte

Artistic Director

Forward Theatre Project

www.forwardtheatreproject.co.uk

We might be producing six shows at the moment, but we’re still getting out and about to see as much of other people’s stuff as possible.

So here’s our occasional round-up of what we’re seeing at the theatre and other things we’re excited about. Please post a comment and let us know what you’re up to, and if there’s any excitement we’ve missed.

We’re heading en masse for Battersea Arts Centre next Friday and Saturday nights where the legendary nabokov Arts Club hosts its Halloween extravaganza Festival Of The Dead. As ever the line-up is amazing with new theatre from Polly Stenham and Tangled Feet and Curious Directive plus music from The Mystery Jets and Tin Roots and comedy from the very funny Radio One star Tom Deacon. Alongside a smorgasbord of other artists making magic in the midst of a big fat party. Come and join us – we’ll be the ones bouncing on the dancefloor – it’s going to be massive.

Fresh (ish) from The nabokov Arts Club we’re heading for the final 24 Hour performance of The Bush’s amazing 66 BOOKS. Our AD James directed one – A NOBODY by Laura Dockrill – and we’re really excited to see work by top notch playwrights like Nick Payne, Jack Thorne, James Graham, Sam Burns, Elinor Cook, Tom Wells, Enda Walsh… the list is frankly lip-licking.

We’re looking forward to a whole host more theatrical delights in the coming weeks. Former PP Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone once again teams up with Abi Morgan on The National Theatre Of Scotland’s 27. The pair first collaborated on PP hits Splendour and Tiny Dynamite. The latter was a co-production with Frantic Assembly, who are also working with Abi and The Theatre Royal, Plymouth on LOVESONG. We can’t wait to catch both. Our friends at Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse are co-producing Lizzie Nunnery’s brilliant new play THE SWALLOWING DARK with Theatre 503 so we’re excited about that. We’ve seen Jack Thorne’s BUNNY before, but we’re going again to Soho Theatre because it’s truly stunning. And we’re well up for Forward Theatre Project’s SCRATCH MY CITY at the same venue.

We’re also looking forward to… JUMPY and BANG, BANG, BANG at The Royal Court, and the Bush’s forthcoming THE KITCHEN SINK by the endlessly talented Tom Wells. And we’ll be at SKANE at Hampstead and Ben Musgrave’s HIS TEETH at Only Connect and TERROR 2011 and lots of other things too.

And of course, we literally cannot wait for Mike Bartlett’s 13 at The National Theatre. You can also catch Mike’s seminal EARTHQUAKES IN LONDON at Richmond Theatre this week.

So see you at the theatre sometime we hope. Tell us what we’re missing – post a comment.

Dublin's fair city

As recently reported, team PP spent some time up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August, where we were lucky enough to see an abundance of brilliant work. You can imagine my delight therefore when last week our joint AD James extended to me an invitation to the ABSOLUT Fringe Festival in Dublin, courtesy of the very lovely people at the Irish Theatre Institute. One week later,  I’m taking two days off from booking our spring tour of Kate Tempest’s WASTED, and boarding an Aer Lingus flight from London Gatwick, to see what Irish theatre has in store. Very excited indeed.

As Ireland’s largest multi-disciplinary arts festival, over 16 days the ABSOLUT Fringe Festival stages up to 525 events in over 40 venues, and is a platform for the best new, emerging Irish arts companies and a showcase for the best contemporary theatre. While I’m there, I’ll have the pleasure of attending the ITI’s Information Toolbox and Show in a Bag initiative, a platform for new small-scale artist led shows which promise to be daring and invigorating.

Historically, PP has enjoyed a great relationship with the Irish, and we’re always on the lookout for new writers to work with, and venues to tour to. You may remember our A Play, A Pie and A Pint season last year toured all five plays to Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, one of the venues at this year’s ABSOLUT Fringe. Artistic Director of Bewley’s, David Horan, directed IN THE PIPELINE by Gary Owen, and Belfast born Marie Jones wrote FLY ME TO THE MOON. We were also thrilled to take Mike Bartlett’s LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to this year’s Galway Arts Festival, and delving into our archive, you’ll see that we have recently produced plays by ace Irish playwrights Enda Walsh, Sebastian Barry and Hilary Fannin.

With a jam-packed schedule of new writing, Information Toolbox and Show in a Bag, I’ll report back fully next week on my Dublin adventure… if I ever make it out of the Guinness Factory, where I have been instructed by James to find time to have a pint. Yes boss!

To paraphrase Rebekkah Black, it’s Friday, Friday and we’re all looking forward to the weekend.  But before we go, we thought we’d just update you on what’s been happening at PP HQ over the last few days.

The brilliant Amy Cook has been working on some jazzy new signage for the office today, and we can’t stop admiring her handiwork. Here she is at work, as well as a sneak-peak at the nearly-finished product.  Never again will visitors wander in uncertainly and say tentatively ‘I’m looking for Paines Plough…?’.

Today’s also Chrissy and Tash’s last day, and we’ll be very sad to see them go.  Both of them have been here for 3 months, and Chrissy’s run down of her time as Trainee Producer will be following shortly. We’ll be toasting all their hard work over prosecco and cake this evening.

Show-wise, despite suffering from a something of an Edinburgh-induced theatre hangover, this week we’ve seen Double Feature 1 & 2 at The National Theatre, The Faith Machine at the Royal Court and Dr Faustus at the Globe.

Finally, in upcoming news, we’ll be announcing casting for Roundabout very soon, along with updates on A Play, A Pie and A Pint. So be sure to stay tuned to the blog and, most importantly, have a lovely weekend.

Edinburgh. With all too familiar cloud cover that will soon put paid to that sunshine!

We’re back at HQ exhausted but exhilarated after our week in Edinburgh. Fringe decompression starts here.

Huge thanks to everyone who came to our two days of Open Auditions – more than 200 of you. We loved meeting and talking to you all, and we were very excited by the breadth and depth of talent on display.

As always we saw some brilliant extracts of plays, with Scottish playwrights like David Greig, Rona Munro, Linda McLean and Douglas Maxwell amongst the most popular. Interestingly, over the two days, female playwrights were more performed than male playwrights for the first time in Open Auditions.

On the second day I conducted a straw poll amongst auditionees asking: “Who’s your favourite playwright?” The answers make for interesting reading. Namechecked were: Anthony Neilson, Bryony Lavery, April De Angelis, Lally Katz, Steve Thompson, David Greig, Lucy Prebble, Laura Wade, Martin Crimp, Linda McLean, Philip Ridley, Sarah Kane, Arthur Miller, John Godber, Douglas Maxwell, Rona Munro, Ella Hickson, Alan Aykbourn, Jez Butterworth, Che Walker, Simon Stephens, Mike Bartlett, Mark Ravenhill, Moira Buffini and, um, Franz Kafka, who we were hitherto unaware had actually written any plays.

We’re really grateful to our friends at C Venues for hosting Open Auditions.

We also greatly enjoyed meeting and chatting to everyone who came to our Fringe Central Q&A. We had several fascinating discussions about the Fringe itself and about touring, funding and new writing in general. We talked about our favourite phrase – “force it into existence” – and how we believe emerging artists should produce their own work rather than waiting for established theatres to do so. Easier said than done, but the Edinburgh Fringe is inspiration enough to give it a go. Tenacity and enterpreneurialism built the world’s greatest arts festival.

Of course we were also in town to glut ourselves on as much theatre as possible, and we managed to see more than 60 shows between us.

George and I went up for a few days at the start of the festival and saw:

DUCKS
MISSION DRIFT
YOUR LAST BREATH
TAKETH ME AWAY
YOUNG PRETENDER
TOUR GUIDE
WHEN WOMEN WEE
THE MONSTER IN THE HALL
THE GOLDEN DRAGON
THE FORUM
A SLOW AIR
WHISTLE
MAN OF VALOUR
WHAT REMAINS
THE WHEEL
FUTUREPROOF

Then in the past week between us we covered (amongst others):

ROSE
WRETCH
TRANSLUNAR PARADISE
OEDIPUS
DREAM PILL
MIDNIGHT YOUR TIME
TONIGHT SANDY GRIERSON WILL LECTURE, DANCE AND BOX
SHERICA
AUDIENCE
PHILLIPA AND WILL ARE NOW IN A RELATIONSHIP
MY FILTHY HUNT
I HOPE MY HEART GOES FIRST
FITZROVIA RADIO HOUR
IF THAT’S ALL THERE IS
2401 OBJECTS
3RD RING OUT
JOHN PEEL’S SHED
THE DARK PHILOSOPHERS
FEDERER VS MURRAY
TUESDAY AT TESCO’S
YOU ONCE SAID YES
GO TO YOUR GOD LIKE A SOLDIER
WHICH ONE’S FERGAL?
GUTTER JUNKY
THIRSTY
THE OH F**K MOMENT
SOLD
BODY OF WATER
THE TABLE
BELARUS FREE THEATRE: MINSK 2011
LAUNDRY BOY
MAD ABOUT THE BOY
THE SEXUAL AWAKENING OF PETE MAYO
BLOOD AND ROSES
BELT UP’S OUTLAND
ROADKILL

We also marvelled at Kate Tempest‘s extraordinary scratch for BAC. In just five hours, she wrote a 15 minute poem which she then performed in the incredible Anatomy Theatre at Summerhall accompanied by an ace violinist. To quote a tweet from someone straight afterwards: “everyone just sat with their mouths open”.

We bopped to Little Bulb’s GOOSE PARTY and laughed a lot at TOM DEACON and RUSSELL KANE and HOLLY WALSH and ISY SUTTIE and FRISKY AND MANNISH and were wowed by LUKE WRIGHT’S CYNICAL BALLADS and AISLE 16 and THE HORNE SECTION and SHLOMO.

We did a bit of dancing and drank some beers and met lots of interesting people and got a cumulative total of about 40 minutes sleep. It was marvellous.

Inspired and invigorated and absolutely knackered we’ve headed home. Thank you Edinburgh. We had a ball.

One last thing… we’re really sorry if you invited us to see your show and we didn’t make it. We would have loved to have seen twice as much, but the schedule was jam-packed. We hope you all had great festivals.

Bring on next year.

Edinburgh Schedule

First you will need a reliable electronic calendar (check.)

Second of all you will need access to the very user friendly Edinburgh Fringe website (check).

And lastly a constant supply of sweets/biscuits/chocolate to stop your brain from exploding. (Double check).

Next week the team will be heading up to the Edinburgh Festival for a week of what can only be described as hardcore theatre-going.  Little did I realise what would be in store for me when casually asked would I mind putting a schedule together for the week in Edinburgh.

With approximately 65 show invites (and counting), 2 days of open auditions along with some casting and workshop sessions, this proved to be no easy task.

For any of you who may think your kind invitations go unnoticed – think again creative people – we really do try to see all the brilliant work writers, actors and designers are doing, along with continuing to support those that Paines Plough have collaborated with both past, present and in the future.

There will still be a few of us holding the forte here at our London office but I cannot deny I am a little bit jealous (ok insanely jealous) of the creative treats in store for the Edinburgh contingent.  One thing’s for certain I will for once be getting more sleep than everyone else.

Thanks to our jam-packed festival season, we’ve been able to expand our theatrical horizons somewhat this summer. Between us, team PP have been soaking up shows at the Manchester International Festival, Galway Arts Festival, Latitude Festival and the Avignon Festival, as well as staying up to date with the best work on the UK’s theatrical calendar. We’ve got a fantastic line-up of shows to see before the end of the month, when we head up to Edinburgh to tackle that behemoth of theatrical beasts – the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Before we headed off on our various festival adventures, we were thrilled to catch THE ACID TEST by Anya Reiss at the Royal Court, REALISM by Anthony Neilson at Soho, RICHARD III at the Old Vic, DR FAUSTUS at The Globe, LUISE MILLER at the Donmar, ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, WHERE’S MY SEAT by Deirdre Kinahan, Jack Thorne and Tom Wells at The Bush,  FIXER by Lydia Adetunji & LITTLE BABY JESUS by Arinze Kene both at Oval House Theatre, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at the Wyndhams, BELONGINGS by Morgan Lloyd Malcom at Hampstead Downstairs, BUNNY by Jack Thorne at the Royal Exchange, THE PRIDE by Alexi Kaye Campbell at the Crucible Studio and Spymonkey’s LOVE IN at the Udderbelly.

Whilst in New York James and George managed to catch BOOK OF MORMON and 4,000 MILES by Amy Herzog.

At the Manchester International Festival, during a rather hectic week (of which there is more here), George managed to see Victoria Wood’s THAT DAY WE SANG as well as Bjork’s BIOPHILIA.

Dashing straight to Avignon from Manchester, George was fortunate enough to see what he has since described as one of the best piece of theatre he’s ever seen – a version of HAMLET, entitled AU MOINS J’AURAI LAISSE UN BEAU CADAVRE (AT LEAST I WILL HAVE LEFT A BEAUTIFUL CORPSE) as well as one of the strangest, LA PARANOIA. More on that to follow later this week.

In Galway James and Tara caught Enda Walsh’s astonishing MISTERMAN before dashing off to Latitude to meet up with the rest of the team to open Kate Tempest’s WASTED. Whist at Latitude we saw and loved Joel Horwood’s JEKYLL AND HYDE, the National Theatre of Scotland’s CRUNCH, Fuel’s ELECTRIC HOTEL, nabokov’s FAIRY TALES by Jack Thorne and Arthur Darvill, Whippet Productions‘ THE SPIES IN ROOM 502 by Jonathan Britten, Theatre Uncut’s short plays about the recent government cuts, and The Bush’s production of FLOODED GRAVE by Anthony Weigh, amongst many more. There’s loads about our weekend at Latitude here.

Back in London we’ve been to see THE CHERRY ORCHARD, LONDON ROAD, EMPEROR AND GALILEAN, DOUBLE FEATURE and ONE MAN TWO GUVNORS, all at the National, THE VILLAGE BIKE by Penelope Skinner at the Royal Court, FOR ONCE by Tim Price at Hampstead Downstairs, MIRROR TEETH by Nick Gill at The Finborough and Curious Directive’s YOUR LAST BREATH at The Pleasance.

We’re off to Edinburgh next month so please let us know of your recommendations by posting below or tweeting us @painesplough and we’ll try and add them to our schedule. Once we’re up there we’ll return the favour.