Bush Pairs Stefan G Monologues in New Season

Following their debuts at the Edinburgh Fringe, Stefan Golaszewski’s two solo shows, Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About a Girl He Once Loved and Stefan Golaszewski Is a Widower, will both transfer to London for a Christmas season. Presented together for the first time, The Stefan Golaszewski Plays, portraying one man’s love at two very different stages of life, will run from 4 December 2009 (previews from 2 December) to 9 January 2010 at west London’s Bush Theatre.
Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About a Girl He Once Loved is about being 18, in love and unable to cope. In Walthamstow in 1999, a girl and a boy meet in a pub. In Stefan Golaszewski Is a Widower, which forms the second part of the Bush evening, it’s 2056 and Golaszewski’s wife has died two years earlier. He’s now crushed, alone and 76 years old.

Stefan Golaszewski Is a Widower receives its world premiere at this month’s Edinburgh Fringe, running at the Traverse Theatre from 7 to 30 August 2009. Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About a Girl He Once Loved, Golaszewski’s debut play, premiered at last year’s Fringe, when it won a Fringe First and earned Golaszewski a Best Actor nomination in The Stage Awards. It also had an Off-Braodway season and is now in development with the UK Film Council.

The Stefan Golaszewski Plays are both written and performed by Golaszewski, and directed and designed by Philip Breem. They’re presented in London by Stefan Golaszewski and Richard Jordan Productions Ltd in association with the Bush Theatre and United Agents.

The Bush Theatre’s newly announced autumn/winter season of new plays kicks off next month with 2nd May 2007, the latest from Jack Thorne (When You Cure Me, which takes place on the night of New Labour’s historic election victory, sweeping the Tories out of government after 18 years in power. The Nabokov co-production, directed by George Perrin, runs at the Bush from 14 September to 10 October 2009 (previews from 8 September) before touring to Watford Palace, Mercury Colchester and Manchester’s Royal Exchange.

Artistic director Josie Rourke will direct the Bush season’s next offering, If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, by Nick Payne, who won the 2009 George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright. When fat kid Anna hits back at bullies, she’s suspended from school and finds herself stuck at home with her hapless uncle Terry. It runs from 22 October to 21 November 2009 (previews from 17 October).

Further ahead, in the new year after The Stefan Golaszewski Plays, James Graham’s The Whisky Taster (20 January to 20 February) centres on two advertising wiz kids who hire a wise old Scottish whiskey taster to help on a new campaign and is directed by Bush artistic director James Grieve; and Penelope Skinner’s black comedy Eigengrau (10 March to 10 April) throws together two pairs of London flatmates, directed by Polly Findlay.