Joanna Laurens’s contemporary re-working of Ovid’s Myrrah story explores themes of love, language and the senses. Myrrah’s family is torn apart when a stranger arrives in their underground city promising a bright future.

Laurens has recently completed her tenure as RSC Writer in Residence. Her other plays include The Three Birds, for which she won the Critics’ Circle Most Promising Playwright Award in 2001, and Five Gold Rings, which was staged at the Almeida in 2003.

Poor Beck premiered at The Other Place as part of the RSC’s New Work Festival. Its cast comes from the RSC Tragedies season and includes Greg Hicks.