Soho theatre has announced an eclectic autumn season of international work that includes Fringe First winning play Itsoseng, New York cabaret show Lustre and a high energy thriller set in Bromley.
The season kicks off on 8 September (to 27 September) with a powerful one-man play, Itsoseng, which comes to Soho following a Fringe First-winning run at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. Written and performed by Omphile Molusi, the play tells the true story of his South African hometown, Itsoseng, which is still waiting for regeneration 13 years after the advent of democracy.
The play’s run coincides with an International Workshop Festival called Acts Of Resistance (25-27 September), which invites international theatre makers to explore ways in which theatre can change the world. The festival includes South Africa’s Monde Wani with The Rivonia Trial, testimonials from the Beslan massacre in The Luckless Angel, plus workshops and debates.
Soho’s season also includes two New York imports: Peter S Petralia’s Whisper (29 September-4 October) is a highly visual and aural piece of work that transmits its story to the audience through headphones; Justin Bond, New York performer and star of Kiki and Herb, combines glamour, queer cabaret and live music in the UK debut of his show Lustre (9 October-1 November).
In between, Soho presents Russell Barr’s Danny Diva (29 September-4 October), a work inspired by the life of profoundly deaf drag performer Diva Dan, a member of the Bloolips troupe in the 1980s. Appropriately, the show features big musical numbers, pink roller skates and fully integrated British Sign Language.
The Soho goes from glamour to grit with Churchill Theatre Bromley’s production of Ali Taylor’s Overspill (14 October-1 November). A high energy thriller set in Bromley, Overspill centres on three lads whose usual Friday night routine of boozing, birds and burgers takes on a terrifying twist when an explosion rocks the town centre and the finger of suspicion is pointed at them.
Shelagh Stephenson’s hard hitting and highly topical play The Long Road returns to Soho on 10 November (to 29 November) following a previous run in May this year and a subsequent prison tour. The play centres on a family torn apart by grief and struggling to find forgiveness after the fatal stabbing of brother and son Danny.
To finish the season, theatre-maker Mick Gordon teams up with neurologist Paul Broks and puppeteers Blind Summit for On Emotion (5 November-20 December). The third in an ambitious series of ‘theatre essays’ following On Ego and On Religion, it explores the complicated arena of human emotions.
As usual, the Soho’s season of theatre is accompanied by a programme of stand up comedy, which this autumn includes if.comedy winner David O’Doherty, Josie Long, Phil Kay and Danny Bhoy, plus the theatre’s popular Comedy Club 4 Kids.
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