Mogadishu Tours to Liverpool Playhouse, 30 Jan

The Royal Exchange Theatre’s Bruntwood prize-winning play Mogadishu written by Vivienne Franzmann is coming to Liverpool next week.

Set
in an inner city London school, the play centres on white teacher
Amanda. When she is pushed to the ground by black student Jason, she is
reluctant to report him as she knows exclusion could condemn him to a
future as troubled as his past. She becomes sucked into a vortex of lies
in which victim becomes perpetrator. Tensions mount as the truth
becomes less clear and more dangerous by the day.

This new play
was one of the four joint winners in the most recent Bruntwood Prize for
Playwriting. It also went on to win this year’s prestigious George
Devine Award for new writing. It is the first play by author Vivienne
Franzmann who has herself been a secondary school teacher in East
London for ten years. It has also played in London at the Lyric Hammermsith.

Director Matthew Dunster takes the helm for this production. His previous Exchange credits include Macbeth, his own adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 and his award-winning play You Can See The Hills
in The Studio (which also played to packed houses in London’s Young Vic
Theatre). Other recent credits include critically-acclaimed productions
of The Frontline and Troilus and Cressida at London’s Globe Theatre.

The
cast includes Hammed Animashaun, Jackie Clune, Savannah Gordon-Liburd and Tara Hodge. Sets and costumes have been designed by Tom Scutt, whose other credits include the recent production of Hamlet at Sheffield Crucible and Rupert Goold’s RSC production of Romeo and Juliet.
The creative team is completed by Philip Gladwell (lighting), Ian
Dickinson (sound), Wyllie Longmore (voice coach), Kevin McCurdy
(fight director) and Kim Pearce (Assistant Director).

Mogadishu
runs at the Liverpool Playhouse from 30 January – 4 February, 2012.