 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2011) |
The Sugar Syndrome is a 2003 play written by British writer Lucy Prebble. It has won several awards and as of 2009 has been sold in seven languages.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2011) |
The Sugar Syndrome is a 2003 play written by British writer Lucy Prebble. It has won several awards and as of 2009 has been sold in seven languages.
The play has four main characters: Dani, Tim, Lewis and Jan. At the beginning, Dani (short for Danielle), a girl of seventeen, has just come home after spending some time in a clinic for eating disorders. Her mother, Jan, is trying to cope with the problems of looking after Dani after separating from her husband. Dani starts talking to people in an internet chat room and gets to know Tim, a man in his thirties. Dani pretends to be an eleven-year-old boy, which Tim believes. Tim is a man in his thirties who has a taste for young boys and has spent some time in prison. He and Dani agree to meet in a park and subsequently become friends.
Dani also meets a lonely young man called Lewis in the chat room. Lewis eventually becomes jealous of the friendship between Dani and Tim and threatens to expose Tim as a pedophile. Tim, anticipating a visit from the police, lends his laptop to Dani for safekeeping. Dani then finds a video on the laptop which appears to depict the rape of a young boy. The play climactically ends with the harrowing sound of the boy being raped. [1] [2]
The play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, from 16 October to 15 November 2003. Directed by Marianne Elliott, (associate director at the Royal Court Theatre), the cast featured Will Ash (Lewis), Kate Duchene (Jan), Stephanie Leonidas (Dani) and Andrew Woodall (Tim). [3] [1] [4]
The play ran in the US at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (Williamstown, Massachusetts) from 27 July 2005 to 7 August. Directed by Maria Mileaf, the cast featured Gaby Hoffmann as Dani. [5] The play was also staged in St. Louis, MO by Echo Theatre Company in 2006.
In 2020 a new production was staged at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames in the UK, directed by Oscar Toeman, with John Hollingsworth as Tim, Jessica Rhodes as Dani, Ali Barouti as Lewis and Alexandra Gilbreath as Jan. Peter Mason, reviewing the production in the Morning Star newspaper, said: "While the play itself is electrifying, the acting from the outstanding cast of four generates its own static charge, creating an atmosphere that occasionally makes the hair stand on end." [6]
The CurtainUp reviewer wrote: "Ms Prebble weaves her plot with originality and an excellent ear for dialogue. … This is an outstanding first play … ." [1]
The Times reviewer wrote: "Prebble's play is excellently wrought, and courageous in its engagement with taboo." [2]
The British Theatre Guide reviewer wrote: "Some of the motivations are a little awry and Lucy Prebble tries to put too many complications into her first play. Despite this, she writes well, with great humour and compassion and creates interesting characters about whom it is easy to care." [4]
The Independent reviewer wrote: "The Sugar Syndrome [is a] remarkably assured, funny and perceptive debut play by twenty-two-year-old Lucy Prebble." [7]
Der Struwwelpeter is an 1845 German children's book written and illustrated by Heinrich Hoffmann. It comprises ten illustrated and rhymed stories, mostly about children. Each cautionary tale has a clear moral lesson that demonstrates the disastrous consequences of misbehavior in an exaggerated way. The title of the first story provides the title of the whole book. Der Struwwelpeter is one of the earliest books for children that combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, and is considered a precursor to comic books.
Stephen David Daldry CBE is an English director and producer of film, theatre, and television. He has won three Tony Awards for his work on Broadway and an Olivier Award for his work in the West End. He has received three Academy Awards nominations for Best Director, for the films Billy Elliot (2000), The Hours (2002), and The Reader (2008).
The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, London, England. In 1956 it was acquired by and remains the home of the English Stage Company, which is known for its contributions to contemporary theatre and won the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities in 1999.
Gabrielle Mary Antonia Hoffmann is an American actress. She made her film debut in Field of Dreams (1989) and found success as a child actress acting in Uncle Buck (1989), This Is My Life (1992), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and then later as a teenager with Now and Then (1995), Everyone Says I Love You (1996) Volcano (1997), All I Wanna Do (1998), and 200 Cigarettes (1999).
The Cryptogram is a play by American playwright David Mamet. The play concerns the moment when childhood is lost. The story is set in 1959 on the night before a young boy is to go on a camping trip with his father. The play premiered in 1994 in London, and has since been produced Off-Broadway in 1995 and again in London in 2006.
Stephanie Leonidas is an English actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles in the fantasy film MirrorMask (2005), the Syfy series Defiance (2013–2015), and the Crackle crime series Snatch (2017–2018).
Fool for Love is a play written by American playwright and actor Sam Shepard. The play focuses on May and Eddie, former lovers who have met again in a motel in the desert. The play premiered in 1983 at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where Shepard was the playwright-in-residence. The play was a finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
John Doyle is a Scottish stage director of musicals and plays, as well as operas. He served as artistic director at several regional theatres in the United Kingdom, where he staged more than 200 professional productions during his career spanning over 40 years.
The American Clock is a play by Arthur Miller. The play is about 1930s America during The Great Depression. It is based in part on Studs Terkel's Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression.
Richard John Nelson is an American playwright and librettist. He wrote the book for the 2000 Broadway musical James Joyce's The Dead, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, as well as the book for the 1988 Broadway production of Chess. He is also the writer of the critically acclaimed play cycle The Rhinebeck Panorama.
Five Guys Named Moe is a musical with a book by Clarke Peters and lyrics and music by Louis Jordan and others. The musical is based on an earlier musical short of the same name by Louis Jordan from 1943. It had its UK debut at the Cottesloe Theatre at the National Theatre followed by a short run at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, before moving to the West End for over four years in, and finally premiering on Broadway in 1992. It was revived in 2010 at Edinburgh Festival, starring Peters himself, and returned later in 2010 to the theatre in which it originally premiered. The musical won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Entertainment.
Janie Dee is a British actress. She won the Olivier Award for Best Actress, Evening Standard Award and Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Play, and in New York the Obie and Theatre World Award for Best Newcomer, for her performance as Jacie Triplethree in Alan Ayckbourn's Comic Potential.
William Dudley is a British theatre designer.
Dominic Cooke is an English director and writer.
Lucy AshtonPrebble is a British playwright and producer. She has received numerous accolades including three Primetime Emmy Awards as well as nominations for a BAFTA Award as well as two Laurence Olivier Awards.
Enron is a 2009 play by the British playwright Lucy Prebble, based on the Enron scandal.
Judy Upton is a British playwright.
Stephen Michael Kunken is an American actor. He is known for the roles of Ari Spyros on Showtime's Billions and Commander Putnam on Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale. His film work includes work with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Paul Greengrass, Ang Lee, Barry Levinson, Ron Howard and others. Graduating with top honors from The Juilliard School, Kunken has an extensive and celebrated theater career appearing on Broadway in 7 different Productions and countless off-Broadway and Regional productions. He is most readily known for playing Andy Fastow in the Broadway play Enron, for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Featured Actor in a Play. Other Broadway credits include Frost/Nixon and Rock 'n' Roll'.
The WhatsOnStage Awards, founded in 2001 as the Theatregoers' Choice Awards, are a fan-driven set of awards organised by the theatre website WhatsOnStage.com, based on a popular vote recognising performers and productions of English theatre, with an emphasis on London's West End theatre.
The Effect is a play by the British playwright Lucy Prebble. The story revolves around two protagonists, Connie and Tristan, who volunteer in a clinical drug trial, where they start to fall in love. Their relationship throws the trial off-course.