Leeds' West Yorkshire Playhouse has announced its seventh annual Northern
Exposure season, celebrating new writing from the North. This year’s
event will showcase a wide array of productions, readings and events
across Yorkshire, including a surprise one-off performance in a hotel
room in Harrogate. The season comprises five new plays, including a
West Yorkshire Playhouse double bill, written by graduates of the Playhouse’s
So You Want to Be a Writer? course.
Associate Director (Literary) Alex Chisholm said, "I think that
there is an immense amount of talent within Yorkshire, and as a theatre
we have a responsibility to the region to nurture new writers and to
keep producing exciting new work that will challenge and stimulate.
This year’s double bill writers have demonstrated the levels of
creativity and energy that exist here. They are a shining example of
Yorkshire’s reputation for humour and culture."
28 April– 2 May
West Yorkshire Playhouse Double Bill
It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow
By Dom Grace and Boff Whalley
The play follows the story of two brothers, John 15 and Philip 12,
who set off on an epic journey from Middleton to Hull, in search of
an orange. Set in summer 1940, dad is away in France, and mum is ill,
leaving the boys to do their best to help around the house, making
cups of tea, batting potatoes to each other, and arguing over who
gets to be Len Hutton. Sent away to visit Auntie Maggie and Uncle
Frank, they decide to sneak off on an undercover mission - to get
their mum that rare exotic fruit, her heart’s desire, an orange.
Set against the backdrop of war-time Yorkshire, it is a tale of cricket,
growing up and the strength of family ties.
Me, As a Penguin
By Tom Wells
Stitch, a young man from a tiny village in East Yorkshire, leaves
behind the comforts of his job in a knitting shop, in search of the
bright city lights and the gay scene of Hull. But, when staying with
his heavily pregnant sister Liz and her partner Mark doesn’t
turn out to be quite what he hoped, Stitch gets caught up in a rather
sticky situation involving a zoo keeper, a man in a giant penguin
suit, and an overdose of kelp.
22 - 25 April
Kellerman
By imitating the dog and Pete Brooks
Diagnosed as delusional, Harry is in a hospital where he’s struggling
to come to terms with a tragedy that nobody believes has taken place.
His notebooks are filled with calculations that attempt to show the
past can be manipulated and the future predicted. Can he prove everyone
wrong by changing the order of events that led to the disappearance
of everything he loved?
5 - 6 May
The North East Theatre Consortium
Queen Bee
By Margaret Wilkinson
When Ruth, a psychiatric nurse, takes a job as a live-in carer in
an isolated Northumberland house with her patient, Angel, and an elderly
housekeeper, Eusapia, she is looking forward to an easy ride after
her former employment in a busy hospital. Soon though, the women are
threatened by a figure lurking outside. Is it a figment of the hysterical
woman’s imagination? An intruder? Locked indoors together, the
three women become increasingly suspicious of each other. Someone
is not who she says she is.
13 - 16 May
Unlimited Theatre in association with The Curve, Leicester
The Moon The Moon
By Clare Duffy, Jon Spooner and Chris Thorpe
A man stands on the edge of the shore. He’s made Christmas dinner.
It’s February. He’s going to walk across the water and apologise
to his wife’s family. And then he’s locked in a cellar,
wearing someone else’s pyjamas. Upstairs, his self-appointed
doctor and nurse say they can help him. And the Moon, who has been
watching him wander out of his mind with loss, sings to him, desperate
for him to join her. Slipping between realities, the man doesn’t
know if he’s actually being looked after or has been kidnapped.
In either instance, there isn’t much time. He must choose whether
to be healed by his captors and live, or to go with the Moon and love.
