Theatre News

Fringe Winner Once & For All Arrives at BAC, 25 Oct

Editorial Staff
London's West End

Edinburgh hit Once and for all we’re gonna tell you who we are so shut up and listen, which today won a Fringe First in the final round of the Scotsman-run awards (See Today’s Other News), will transfer to south London’s Battersea Arts Centre this autumn, running for a limited four days on from 25 to 28 October 2008, following its UK premiere this month at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre.

The new piece, from Belgian company Ontroerend Goed, gives teenagers an opportunity to say what they think about the world today. It shows 13 young people trying to get to grips with their lives. They are rebellious, behave aggressively, feel vulnerable, play like children, but are sometimes surprisingly adult.

According to promotional material, “this is the show that will make all other art on puberty superfluous, and will make you think that its creators are super cool.” It’s performed exclusively by 13- to 18-year-olds. Ontroerend Goed previous UK work includes The Smile Off Your Face, which won a Fringe First at last year’s Edinburgh festival and subsequently transferred to BAC as part of the venue’s BURST festival.

Once and for all… is produced in the UK by Richard Jordan, who is also behind another Fringe First winner, South African one-man show Itsoseng, which last week announced its London transfer in September to Soho Theatre (See News, 15 Sep 2008).

Other Edinburgh 2008 theatre productions that have already announced London transfers are:

  • Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress – Running at the Underbelly’s Cow Barn in Edinburgh, the American comedienne’s self-penned, autobiographical comedy opens the new Leicester Square Theatre, previously The Venue, where it runs from 29 August to 18 September, and then returns from 2 December to 29 January 2009 prior to a Broadway transfer. During Rivers’ second stay in London, she’ll also be performing hostess duties at the launch party for the 2009 Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Awards at the Café de Paris on 5 December (See News, 26 Jun 2008).


  • 365 – The National Theatre of Scotland’s production of David Harrower’s latest play opens at the Playhouse today as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, after which it moves to London’s Lyric Hammersmith from 8 to 27 September (See News, 24 Apr 2008). The new play from the author of Blackbird and Knives in Hens concerns fragmented modern lives and young people in the UK’s care system and tells the story of a year in a practice flat – a purpose-built witness to hopes, dreams, fear, opportunity and memory. NTS artistic director Vicky Featherstone directs.

  • Dorian Gray – Director-choreographer Matthew Bourne’s new dance drama, based on Oscar Wilde’s 1891 gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, is set in the image-obsessed world of contemporary art and politics (See News, 2 Apr 2008). Also part of EIF, it’s at Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre from 22 to 30 August before its London dates at Sadler’s Wells, from 2 to 14 September, and a brief regional tour. Richard Winsor plays the title role.

    – by Terri Paddock

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