Alex Ferns in Coyote on a Fence
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Coyote on a Fence Posts Closing Notices for 22 May

The West End’s spate of rapid play exits continues with the European premiere production of Coyote on a Fence, which will now close on 22 May 2004, just three weeks after opening at the Duchess Theatre.

The play’s closure follows the recent premature departures of two other dramas - The Holy Terror and Calico, which both closed this spring after less than a month apiece at the Duke of York’s (See News, 26 Apr 2004) – as well as the cancellation of the West End’s much-heralded Savoy Opera, launched as a year-round enterprise last month and called off last Friday (See News, 7 May 2004).

Set on death row in a jail in the southern US, Coyote on a Fence revolves around two inmates. John Brennan is an educated yet arrogant writer, editor of the prison newspaper Death Row Advocate, whose crime could be viewed as doing society a ‘favour’. In the cell next to him, Bobby Alvin Reyburn, a deeply disturbed young man, is a member of the Aryan nation and the perpetrator of an horrific mass racist murder.

Alex Ferns (pictured) and Ben Cross star as Brennan and Reyburn. American author Bruce Graham was inspired to write the play, premiered in Chicago in 1998, by his own two-year correspondence with James Beathard, a death row inmate at the Texas State Penitentiary who was executed in December 1999.

Sarah Esdaile directs the British production, which transferred to London after its initial dates last month at Manchester’s Royal Exchange (See News, 20 Jan 2004). Coyote on a Fence opened the West End’s Duchess Theatre on 28 April 2004 (previews from 22 April). No further productions have yet been announced for the venue.

- by Terri Paddock

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