Theatre News

Crossed Keys Steps Onto Platform Peterborough 2011

Anne Morley-Priestman

Platform Peterborough 2011 is the Eastern Angles’ initiative which brings small-scale professional touring theatre with a local flavour to the town. It really all began as a bit of arm-twisting by Arts Council English East in connexion with funding for the Ipswich-based company a couple of years ago. Since then it has grown, flourished and become a major part of the company’s work, picking up an enthusiastic audience as it goes.

Peterborough is a city of contrasts. Successive waves of immigration have populated what was a somewhat laid-back cathedral town, one with apparently a bit more to its past than to its future, with incomers from many different countries, cultures and religions. Eastern Angles’ work addresses this dichotomy and a new half-hour play touring pubs, clubs and community centres until 22 October is its most recent manifestation.

Crossed Keys (written by Greg Lyons and directed by Kate Budgeon) is a love story, with a twist. Shakruk (Mariam Haque) is a young Muslim woman, recently married to Hussein (John Bosco). An encounter with an old Irishman, Michael (Aidan Dooley) puts the young couple’s own problems in trying to reconcile life in a British city with old customs imported from a long-departed homeland into an unexpected perspective.