Rhum and Clay’s critically acclaimed adaptation of HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds will play at Southampton’s MAST Mayflower Studios from 2-5 June, following sold-out runs in London and in Edinburgh. 

“No one would have believed, in the last years of the 19th century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space....” 

But we did believe. We believed that Martians landed in New Jersey. We believed a water tower was an alien war machine. We believed a man walked on the moon. Perhaps we will believe anything…everything …

Inspired by Orson Welles’ classic radio play, this legendary icon of science fiction is reimagined for our era of deliberate disinformation, ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’. An era where mistrust and fear are routinely stoked by the purveyors of ‘news’ and the truth has become an ever-harder concept to identify. The War of the Worlds slips between 20th and 21st century lives and listeners as if moving the dial on a radio: atmospheric and disorienting.

Rhum and Clay are joined by the writer of Skin a Cat, Isley Lynn, for the piece, with her powerful contemporary voice offering a welcome counterpoint to a story that originated in the male-dominated society of the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

The War of the Worlds explores our inability to separate fact from fiction and our active complicity in the process of being hoodwinked: lies dressed as truth and truth presented as fiction. But even fake events cause real reactions. With references ranging from H.G Wells and Orson Welles via Jeff Wayne and a nod to Tom Cruise, this intense, unsettling and raucously entertaining reinvention of the original alien invasion myth shows that in the darkest of times, the truth is a very precious commodity. 

Tickets are available now here.