Theatre News

Kelly Orphans Leads First Round of Fringe Firsts

| London's West End |

14 August 2009

The first winners of this year’s prestigious Fringe First Awards, celebrating high-quality new drama at the Edinburgh Festival, have been announced by The Scotsman newspaper today (14 August 2009).

Amongst the winners is Dennis Kelly’s latest play Orphans, a disturbing urban drama in which a couple’s insular world is shaken up the arrival of the woman’s brother, covered in blood. The Paines Plough production reunites Kelly with director Roxana Silbert, who premiered Kelly’s After the End at the Traverse in 2005. Co-produced with Birmingham Rep, after the Fringe, it heads to Birmingham (10 to 26 September) before transferring to London’s Soho Theatre (30 September to 24 October). The cast features Joe Armstrong, Jonathan McGuinness and Claire-Louise Cordwell.

Orphans is one of three wins for the Traverse in this first round of Fringe Firsts. Prizes also went to the theatre’s UK premieres of the Off-Broadway hit East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House, written and performed by Edgar Oliver (which finishes on Sunday, 16 August) and Internal, the latest offering from the Belgian teen theatre troupe Ontroerend Goed, which the Traverse is presenting at the Mercure Point Hotel. Internal follows last year’s Once And For All We’re Going To Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen and is a sequel to 2007’s Smile Off Your Face, both also Fringe First winners.

Four other Fringe firsts were also awarded this week. They went to: Crush, Paul Charlton’s new play about the nature of modern obsession (Underbelly); The Event, the latest collaboration between five-time Fringe First winner John Clancy and actor David Calvitto (Assembly @ George Street); The Unravelling, a play set in a fabric shop, written by playwright Fin Kennedy and performed by the girls from Mulberry School (The Space @ Venue 45); and Found, a new dance piece choreographed by Christine Devaney for Curious Seed (Dance Base).

The Fringe First Awards were established in 1973 when there was concern that the Fringe was not attracting the right quantity and quality of shows. The awards are announced weekly during the festival, with the next round winners being announced next Friday 21 August 2009. There is no fixed number given and the only requirement is that the work must be new – having had no more than six performances in the UK, prior to the Fringe.

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