Pleasance announces 2023 Spring/Summer London season with Edinburgh hits and incredible debuts
Combining the weird and wonderful with the gritty and ground-breaking, the Pleasance’s Spring/Summer Theatre Season 2023 will bring a vibrant and wide-ranging programme of shows, with something for everyone. A glorious line-up of hilarious, heartfelt and hard-hitting shows fill Pleasance’s Main House in the heart of North London: from Edinburgh Fringe legends to critically acclaimed political performance poets, audiences can look forward to a unique astrology bingo night and an abundance of onions. In the intimate studio space Downstairs, grief and ancestral inheritance are explored alongside queer coming-of-age dramas, surreal dark comedies, and topical pieces tackling the corrosiveness of racial stereotypes and the climate crisis.
Kicking off the Spring season in the Main House, Kissed by a Flame (1–11 February) by Simon Perrott is a window into the final months of that once-in-a-lifetime kind of love; the beautiful, tragic, funny, and bittersweet moments that bind us together. In Downstairs, I Love You Now What? (25-29 April) from actor and comedian Sophie Craig opens a window into the story of Ava and Theo, following the loss of Ava’s father that caused her world to come tumbling down. These Words That'll Linger Like Ghosts Till The Day I Drop Down Dead (13–24 June) is an experimental play from the multi-award-winning playwright Georgie Bailey, exploring the things we wish we’d said to those who have now left us, how we manage grief and how, ultimately, we can never go back to the past.
Edinburgh hits are also coming to London. From Rinkoo Barpaga and Deaf Explorer, Made in India Britain (19–20 April) follows Roo, a deaf Punjabi boy from Birmingham living in a world that wasn't made for him. This mesmerising performance is delivered in BSL, with spoken word English translation and Closed captions available via the Difference Engine. Fresh from an award-winning run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Jesus, Jane, Mother & Me (26th – 29th April) is a twisted coming-of-age story blending black humour and heartache by acclaimed playwright Philip Stokes (Heroin(e) for Breakfast), exploring family dynamics, who our idols are and how hard life can be when you’re a little bit different.
Also fresh from the Fringe, My First 75 Years in Comedy (16th – 18th March) is Arthur Smith’s love letter to the playground of the imagination that is the Edinburgh Fringe on its 75th birthday. It tells the story of the great city and its festivals and recalling some of the triumphs, disasters, love affairs and arrests of his many Augusts in Auld Reekie. Hamlet, Colditz, Leonard Cohen, Dante, dementia, Gary Lineker and the Leith Police all feature in this moving hour of revelations, songs, poems, and gags. The award-winning The Remains of Logan Dankworth (8–10 March) is the third in Fringe First winner Luke Wright’s trilogy of political verse plays that look at trust, fatherhood, and family in the age of Brexit, following columnist and Twitter warrior Logan Dankworth as the EU Referendum looms.
Both the Main House and Pleasance Downstairs will see coming-of-age stories of love and relationships: the debut play from TV writer Kat Rose-Martin (Holby City, BBC; Wolfe, Sky), Pick n Mix (24 January–4 February) is a tale of sisterhood, Sex Ed and sanitary pads. In Wild, actually (15–20 May) Ell is peaking – she’s on the cusp of playing for Arsenal Ladies Under18s, her boyfriend’s a model and school is going well – but Ell is also obsessed with films, so much so that she begins to lose touch with her own reality. I think I might cheat on my girlfriend (11–13 May) follows Jermaine – undervalued and underappreciated, he is unhappy in his current relationship, but things start looking up when a new girl starts at work.
Pleasance favourite Mahatma Khandi (Sink The Pink's How To Catch A Krampus; DOG SHOW) is taking up residency in the Pleasance with The Khandi Shop, spread across three very special Friday shows (24 February, 2 June, 24 November). Sweet as the curry sauce you get at McDonald’s, this cabaret Pick and Mix is a playground of creation and collaboration showcasing the excellent talents of disenfranchised performers. Your favourite galactic gal pals and former Pleasance Associate Artists Figs in Wigs (Little Wimmin) return to the Pleasance for three nights only with the universe's first ever cosmic game show for astrology lovers, bingo wingers and their sceptic friends: Astrology Bingo (17–19 May). Instead of numbers, audiences count their lucky stars: each player will receive a unique tailor-made bingo card generated from their personal horoscope.
Decommissioned (10-15 April) is based on the true story of Fairbourne in Wales, a coastal village that Gweynedd council planned to ‘decommission’ and abandon to the sea. This funny confronting play looks at how we’re meant to care for children, fall in love and stay sane while tackling the climate catastrophe. I Hate it Here (28 February–11 March) is an interactive devised piece about zero hours contracts and instability; audiences can expect to participate in game shows, sign up for shifts and have the power to change the outcome of the show. Audio live theatre performance comes to the Pleasance with Insides (3–8 April) about two workers who seek refuge in an emergency bunker after a mine explosion – inviting audiences to watch (and listen) as they unravel, bond, despair, and wait to be saved, exploring how we keep secrets, and what happens when there’s nowhere to hide.
The Devil Wears Prada meets Spy Kids in Fashion Spies (6–11 March), a fabulous and surreal choose-your-own-adventure comedy from Quick Duck Theatre where the audience takes centre stage to thwart the biggest threat that fashion has ever seen. The audience decides the outcome of the show in One Way Mirror (24–29 April), an interactive piece about the art of people watching. Back from his filthy adventures in Clown Sex, Gary Strange delights in overhearing the secrets of his high-rise neighbours through plugholes, drainpipes and washing machine fittings in Love Rash (14–18 February).
Written with the Soho Writers’ Lab and the winner of the 2020 Carlo Annoni International Playwriting Award, Get Happy (27 February–4 March) is the debut show from Joseph Aldous about sentient Alexas, temping, queer happiness, and Ke$ha. Using touching interviews, innovative projection and powerful storytelling, 30 & Out (30 May–3 June) takes audiences on a memorable journey about drawing your own blueprint, discovering identity and losing yourself along the way.
Certain Dark Things bring their striking combination of puppetry, live music and movement in this pulse-quickening gothic thriller, Savage Heart (13–18 March), exploring the horror of entrapment and the resilience of women. Written by Ella Dorman-Gajic, TRADE (20–25 March) is an unflinching, captivating new three-hander exploring morality and power within the European sex-trafficking industry, with artistically integrated captions making the piece accessible for d/Deaf audiences and native Serbo-Croat speakers.
From Mandala Theatre Company, MAD(E) (14–18 March) is an epic story of life, death, and everything in between. Sean Burn’s passionate, exhilarating and uniquely theatrical commentary on masculinity and young men’s mental health was co-created with boys and young men from across the country. Playfight (29 May–3 June), from Orísun Productions – a theatre company dedicated to African and African Caribbean creatives is an unflinching look at the adultification of an entire generation of young Black males. Directed by Leian John-Baptiste (Small Island, National Theatre) this important production examines the corrosive way in which racism determines the direction young Black lives take.
Summer Camp For Broken People (9–20 May) is a bold and brave semiautobiographical dark comedy, based on diary entries, letters and essays written during time in a psychiatric hospital following a violent sexual assault. A show performed entirely in Spanish with English subtitles, The “S” is Silent (11–15 April) looks at the uncomfortable past of Franco’s 40-year-long fascist regime through the eyes and voices of women, those who have been historically left out of the narrative.
Audiences with dark senses of humour can look forward to Stacey Evans’ debut solo show Hanging Around (4–8 April), a brand-new horror comedy about identity, truth, and the peculiar challenges of living; Slow Violence (21–25 March), an absurd comedy from B Team Theatre about attitudes to climate change; and Cosmic Collective’s Heaven’s Gate (13–18 February), which imagines the final hour of the real life 1997 doomsday cult as they prepare for their ‘Graduation’ to the Kingdom of Heaven.
A very stupid clown show, Broigus (8–13 May) is about hereditary anger, feuding solo, the threat of resolutions and the shit David pulled at Grandma's shiva in 1993. Broigus (Yiddish, meaning ‘a feud, an unresolved grievance or a bitter dispute’) is from Associate Artist Lauren Silver, all about the time-honoured Jewish tradition of arguing. Blueprints (12– 17 June) asks if we are destined to repeat ancestral patterns forever. If you could know the entire history of your bloodline, and everything you’re passing on to your children, would you want to know? This new show by Ashlee Elizabeth-Lolo is about beginnings, knowledge, and ancestral inheritance.
Blending theatre, dance, circus, and over 100 delightfully destroyed onions, WILD ONION (15–17 February) brings three queer best friends together to explore and grow their chosen family. The Carol Tambor and LET Award-winning physical theatre company Voloz Collective brings an exciting new show, The Life Sporadic of Jess Wildgoose (19–24 June). This cinematic comic thriller follows a social media content moderator, who’s life starts to fall apart, and she begins to find it impossible to distinguish her past from her future.
The Pleasance’s Artistic Director Anthony Alderson said: “Our spring season really highlights the amazing artists that the Pleasance work with – this incredible breadth of work brings some of our award-winning Edinburgh Fringe shows alongside exciting new programming in both theatre and comedy with pieces that span queer themes, family, relationships and mental health. We are proud to be presenting such bold artists at our London home.”
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