Visitors (play)

Last updated

Visitors is a play by the English playwright Barney Norris. The play premiered at the Arcola Theatre in London in March 2014, in a production directed by Alice Hamilton. It was produced by Norris and Hamilton's company Up In Arms. The cast included Linda Bassett, Robin Soans, Eleanor Wyld and Simon Muller.

The play revolves around an elderly couple who live on a farm on Salisbury Plain, and explores their relationships with each other, their son, and a young carer. The play received widespread acclaim from theatre critics [1] [2] at the Arcola, on a national tour and following its transfer to the Bush Theatre in winter 2014, and was selected by Henry Hitchings for the Evening Standard and Mark Lawson for The Guardian as one of the best productions of 2014.

The play won the Critics' Circle Award and the OffWestEnd Award for Most Promising Playwright for Norris, and the OffWestEnd Award and BritishTheatre.com Award for Best Actress for Linda Bassett. Norris was also nominated for the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Best New Play Award, and the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright, and the production received nominations for Best Actor for Robin Soans, Best Director for Alice Hamilton and Best New Play from the Offies Awards. [3]

Related Research Articles

Rebecca Lenkiewicz is a British playwright and screenwriter. She is best known as the author of Her Naked Skin (2008), which was the first original play written by a living female playwright to be performed on the Olivier stage of the Royal National Theatre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre503</span> Theatre

Theatre503, formerly the Latchmere Theatre, is a theatre located at 503 Battersea Park Road in Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth, above the Latchmere pub. The venue is known for promoting the work of new writers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polly Stenham</span> English playwright

Polly Stenham is an English playwright known for her play That Face, which she wrote when she was 19 years old.

Linda Bassett is an English actress. Her television credits include Victoria Wood's dinnerladies (1999), Lark Rise to Candleford (2008–11), Grandma's House (2010–12) and Call the Midwife (2015–present).

Lucy Ann Kirkwood is a British playwright and screenwriter. She is writer in residence at Clean Break. In June 2018 Kirkwood was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its "40 Under 40" initiative.

Robin Soans is a British actor, and a playwright specialising in verbatim and documentary plays. These plays include Across the Divide (2007); A State Affair (2000) which looked at life on a Bradford estate, produced by Out of Joint Theatre Company; The Arab Israeli Cookbook ; Talking to Terrorists ; Life After Scandal ; and Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage. Other plays include Bet Noir ; Sinners and Saints and Will and Testament.

Lucy Prebble is a British playwright. She is the author of the plays The Sugar Syndrome, The Effect, ENRON and A Very Expensive Poison. For television she adapted Secret Diary of a Call Girl and co-created I Hate Suzie with her close friend Billie Piper. Since 2018, Prebble is Co-Executive Producer and writer on Succession.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rufus Norris</span> British theatre and film director (born 1965)

Rufus Norris is a British theatre and film director, who is currently the Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the National Theatre.

Up In Arms is a British touring theatre company from the south west of England.

<i>The Contingency Plan</i>

The Contingency Plan is the overall title of a pair of plays by the British playwright Steve Waters that opened at the Bush Theatre on 22 April 2009. The two full-length plays are On the Beach and Resilience. They are both set in the United Kingdom in the near future. Both involve the same couple, Will Paxton and Sarika Chatterjee. Paxton is a scientist who has returned from research in Antarctica with a new understanding of glacial melting due to climate change and the corresponding possibilities of a rise in sea levels and of coastal flooding. Michael Billington wrote of the pair of plays that their "flaws pale beside Waters' massive achievement which is to have made the most important issue of our times into engrossing theatre."

Jessica Swale is a British playwright, theatre director and screenwriter. Her first play, Blue Stockings, premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013. It is widely performed by UK amateur companies and is also studied on the Drama GCSE syllabus. In 2016, her play Nell Gwynn won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, after it transferred from the Globe to the West End, starring Gemma Arterton as the eponymous heroine. She also wrote and directed the feature film Summerland (2020).

Snapdragon Productions is a London theatre company run by producer Sarah Loader and director Eleanor Rhode.

<i>Hangmen</i> (play) Play written by Martin McDonagh

Hangmen is a play by the British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. It received its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September 2015, before transferring to the West End's Wyndham's Theatre. The play was directed by Matthew Dunster, designed by Anna Fleischle, and featured David Morrissey and Reece Shearsmith among others. It was universally acclaimed by theatre critics, and was nominated for numerous awards including the Olivier Awards, Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. For its U.S. premiere in 2018 at Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company, Hangmen won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play.

Marla Rubin is an Olivier Award and South Bank Sky Arts Award-winning West End and Broadway theatre producer.

Femi Elufowoju jrListen is a Nigerian theatre and opera director. After Alton Kumalo's Temba Theatre Company, he is the second theatre director of African descent to establish a national touring company in the UK. Elufowoju's stage work has been seen across most key flagship theatres in the UK, and has collaborated extensively with notable creatives within the film, television and radio sectors.

Natasha Delia Letitia Gordon is a British playwright of Jamaican heritage. In 2018, having previously been an actor, with her debut play Nine Night she became the first black British female playwright to have a play staged in the West End.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sian Clifford</span> English actress

Sian Clifford is an English actress. She is best known for playing Claire, the older sister of the titular character in the BBC comedy-drama series Fleabag (2016–2019) and also portrayed Martha Crawley in the ITV/Amazon Studios series Vanity Fair (2018). In 2020, she played Diana Ingram in the ITV series Quiz.

The Off West End Theatre Awards, nicknamed The Offies, were launched in 2010 to recognise and celebrate excellence, innovation and ingenuity of independent Off West End theatres across London. Over 80 theatres participate in the awards, with more than 400 productions being considered annually by a team of 40 assessors, with the winners chosen by a select panel of critics.

Barney Norris, is a British writer.

The Bunker was a fringe theatre in Southwark, London, England, from 2016 to 2020.

References