Mogadishu

Synopsis

This hard-hitting play takes place in an inner city London school, in which a teacher, Amanda, is accused of racial harassment by one of the pupils. It was one for the four joint first prize winners in the most recent Bruntwood Playwriting Competition and was recently announced as the winner of the 2010 George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright. This is the first play by Vivienne Franzman who is herself a Drama teacher in a comprehensive school in London. Age 11+

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 8 March 2011

Mogadishu, by first-time playwright Vivienne Franzmann, won the 2008 Bruntwood Prize under the aegis of the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and Matthew Dunster’s powerful production comes straight from that address to the Lyric.

In some ways, this is becoming dangerously over-familiar territory: mouthy, dead-end London school kids, dysfunctional single parent families, fraught teachers, violence and apathy, gutter language, blatant sexuality, a sense of total breakdown and topsy-turvy social agendas.

But Franzmann, who taught for 12 years in just such a London school, pushes the boundaries by writing some really superb, ambitiously extended scenes between the characters who satellite troublemaker Jason (Malachi Kirby), a black 15-year-old who pushes over a white female English teacher, Amanda (the always excellent, emotionally direct Julia Ford) in a playground rumble and turns the incident inside out in order to save his skin.

There’s one crucial fact abou...

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Latest User Review

M - 1 April 2012:

Brilliantly authentic script and really well acted. Fantastic....

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