Actor/playwright Arinzé Kene’s one-man play good dog, performed by Anton Cross, comes to the Queen’s Hall in Hexham on 21 February and to Live Theatre on 1 March 2017.
Produced by tiata fahodzi and Watford Palace Theatre, good dog, which is set in the noughties, chronicles Britain’s multicultural communities and the everyday injustices that drive people to take back control.
It began as Kene’s attempts to imagine what lay behind the London riots of 2011 in which members of his community took part and has grown to be the story of a community struggling to survive and fight back, spanning multiple characters, families and years, looking through the eyes of people like Mrs Blackwood who is waiting for the day her husband notices her or of Old Man Boateng waiting for the day he gets bored of drinking, and focusing on significant issues for today such as social decay, institutional racism, drug abuse and bullying.
Arinzé Kene is an actor (One Night in Miami… at the Donmar Warehouse and BIFA nominee for Best Supporting Actor in The Pass) who is returning to writing for theatre for the first time since God’s Property in 2013.
The play is directed by Natalie Ibu, artistic director of tiata fahodz, whose directing credits also include productions for Riverside Studios, Young Vic, Lyric, Southwark Playhouse, Southbank Centre, Jersey Arts Trust, The Old Vic Tunnels, Theatre503, The Gate, Latitude, HighTide, BAC, Oran Mor, Traverse, Royal Court, ATC at the Young Vic, OVNV at The Old Vic, Waterloo East and The Vineyard Theatre in New York, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Citizens, The Arches, Contact and Nottingham Playhouse.
The production comes to the North East as part of a national tour which also takes in Watford, Manchester, Huddersfield, Didcot, Ulverston, Birmingham and Deptford.