Theatre News

Basden, Key & Sweet Party at Arts Theatre in March

Theo Bosanquet
London's West End

Tom Basden‘s Fringe First-winning election satire Party, which features a cast including fellow Edinburgh Comedy Award winners Tim Key and Jonny Sweet, is transferring to the Arts Theatre later this year, opening on 2 March 2010 (preview 1 March) for a two-week run.

Party is set in a humble garden shed in deepest suburbia, where four young idealists have decided to form a new political party to save the world from itself. The new fifth member, Duncan (Tim Key), sets about saving the world from them. It’s a comic play “about wanting to change the world but having no idea how and little idea why”.

Starring alongside Basden, Key and Sweet are Anna Crilly (Lead Balloon) and Katy Wix (Extras, Time Trumpet). Fringe First winner Phil Breen (The Stefan Golaszewski Plays) directs.

Party premiered at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, where the play and its cast picked up a raft of awards. Tim Key won the Edinburgh Comedy Award, with Jonny Sweet winning Best Newcomer (See News, 29 Aug 2009). Basden, who won the Best Newcomer Award himself in 2007, picked up a Fringe First. He and Key are both members of comedy sketch group Cowards (alongside Stefan Golaszewski and Lloyd Woolf).