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Shell Teenage Plays Get Full Runs at NT Cottesloe

As previously tipped (See The Goss, 13 Jul 2005), three plays seen last summer at the National Theatre as part of the annual, week-long Shell Connections season celebrating theatre for young people, will be re-staged with full productions in the NT Cottesloe.

Deborah Gearing’s Burn, Enda Walsh’s Chatroom and Mark Ravenhill’s Citizenship will join the Cottesloe repertory from 15 March 2006 (previews from 3 March). The plays, each running for approximately 50 minutes, will normally be performed in an alternating order of double bills, except on the press night and some Saturdays, when all three will be performed together.

Collectively, the plays deal with the “drama of teenagers’ lives” and, according to promotional material, are “intensely alive to the possibilities and pressures faced on the verge of adulthood”. Tickets, normally priced up to £27.50, will be reduced to just £10 for under-18s.

In Gearing’s Burn, a loner in foster-care asks out a girl on an ill-fated date in a stolen car. Walsh’s Chatroom centres on six rebellious 15-year-olds in cyberspace. And Ravenhill’s Citizenship follows a boy’s frank and messy search to discover his sexual identity.

Mark Ravenhill, best known as the author of Shopping and Fucking, will premiere his latest adult play The Cut, in a production starring Ian McKellen, at the Donmar Warehouse in February, before making his pantomime debut next December with Dick Whittington at the Barbican (See News, 9 Dec 2005).

Amongst Enda Walsh’s other credits are Bedbound, Small Things and the multi award-winning Disco Pigs. Deborah Gearing’s other plays include Forest and Rosalind: A Question for Life. All three new pieces are directed by Anna Mackmin and designed by Jonathan Fensom, with lighting by Jason Taylor, music by Paddy Cuneen and sound by Christopher Shutt.

- by Terri Paddock

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