All about the show...
Submitted by AdamBarnard on Sun, 27/07/2008 - 13:26.
Fiercely Comic Drama of Rural Retreat from Award-Winning Playwright Torben Betts
‘LIE OF THE LAND’
By Torben Betts
Performed by Neal Barry and Nia Gwynne
Produced and Directed by Adam Barnard
Pleasance Upstairs, July 30 – August 25, 12.30pm daily
World Premiere
“We have come here to escape the bruising banalities of the modern world. Its demented, thrashing, blinkered occupants. Its crime and its chaos. To spend the rest of our days alone. With just the wind and the rain and the sun and the… uncaring sea.”
A husband and wife abandon the city for a new life at the farthest edge of the isle. No more sweaty tube journeys, no more deadly office days, no more stepping over stale kebabs. Just sea-views and solitude, long walks and longer books.
But do the latest victims of the craze for rural retreat really understand country living? Do they realise how much time they’re going to spend alone, with only each other for company? Should they be alarmed at the rapidly rising level of the sea they overlook? And what to make of the hook-nosed stranger, wandering the bridleways with a grubby coat and a violin?
TORBEN BETTS won Best New Play at the 2007 Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland for The Unconquered. He was also nominated for Best New Play at the 2001 TMA Awards for A Listening Heaven at the Edinburgh Lyceum. Now Betts, who himself relocated from London to a coastal house in Berwick-upon-Tweed five years ago, premieres his newest work in Scotland. Brutally funny and blisteringly paced, Lie of the Land is written in the dark, poetic and dream-like style which makes Betts a truly distinctive voice in British theatre.
The play, inspired by a nightmare Betts had shortly after moving out of London, returns to two of his central themes: In a society centred around competition, can anyone be truly contented with their lot? And, as we ponder this navel-gazing conundrum, are we sticking our heads in the sand while the world lurches towards devastation?
Adding an extra layer of authenticity, Lie of the Land stars a real life couple who live together in London: NEAL BARRY, who appeared Torben Betts’s last two plays, The Swing of Things and The Unconquered, and his partner NIA GWYNNE, winner of Best Actress at the 2004 Theatre in Wales Awards, who has just finished touring the UK in with The Almond and The Seahorse.
Lie of the Land is directed by ADAM BARNARD who previously directed six Edinburgh Fringe shows with Activated Image (“one of the best new companies around” Edinburgh Evenings News) including Stephen Fry’s Latin! and the Fringe First-nominated Amy Evans’ Strike. He directed Betts’s The Swing of Things at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, last year.
The production is supported by Redding Park Developments Ltd, the Edinburgh-based property development firm. The script is published by Oberon Books in July.
Praise for Torben Betts:
“About the most original and extraordinary writer of drama we have” Liz Lochhead
“Betts is an uncommonly talented playwright” Time Out
“He chooses words with the precision of a Conrad or a Naipaul” The Times
Pleasance Courtyard (venue 33) – ‘Pleasance Upstairs’
July 30 – August 25 (not August 11). 12.30pm (ends 1.30pm)
Tickets £7 - £9.50 (previews July 30 – August 2: £5)
Box office: 0131-556 6550 / www.pleasance.co.uk
Show website: www.torbenbetts.com.
More information: Adam Barnard 07850-217 399 adam@activated.co.uk
