Award-winning play giving voice to hidden victims of violent crime to receive European premiere

Surrey-based professional theatre company LynchPin Productions have announced it will stage the European premiere of the award-winning play Apples in Winter by Jennifer Fawcett at The Playground Theatre from 5-15 October.

The one-woman play centres on an American mother – Miriam – whose son committed an exceptionally violent crime. He has been on death row for 22 years. In a few hours, the state will execute him. He is permitted the ritual of choosing a last meal: he asks for his mother’s apple pie. As Miriam shows the audience how to make the perfect pie, they watch her attempt to understand what happened to her son – and how everything changed that night 22 years ago.

The convicted do not serve their sentence alone: their family also has to bear it. And where the sentence is the ultimate one – the death penalty – the families of the executed are little considered. This play provides a rare opportunity to hear an often silenced and ostracised voice: that of the mother of a perpetrator. Apples in Winter is an extraordinarily powerful and yet deeply compassionate play that challenges the audience to reflect on the impact of violent crime on its hidden victims. It journeys into the heart of difficult and charged questions about justice, forgiveness and what it is to try and love unconditionally.

The performance is augmented by the actor preparing and baking an apple pie on stage as the story unfolds. Miriam is played by Edie Campbell and the production is directed by Claire Parker.

Apples in Winter is the winner of the National New Play Network Smith Prize for Political Theatre and the Susan Glaspell Award. US-based Canadian author Jennifer Fawcett says: “I could not be more thrilled that LynchPin Theatre is producing this play in England.”

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