Merit - Finborough Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
THE Finborough Theatre’s Spring Season opens with the London premiere of award-winning playwright Alexandra Wood’s startling new play, Merit. Directed by Tom Littler and performed by Karen Ascoe (as Patricia) and Ellie Turner (Sofia), it runs from Tuesday, March 1 to Saturday, March 26, 2016.
A rapacious banker, corrupt, corrupting, you thought he would steal my soul.
Spain, 2013. Against all odds, young graduate Sofia has got a job as PA to one of the wealthiest bankers in the country. Sofia’s mother questions whether she gave more than just a good interview to get it..
In these times of financial chaos, the bankers are getting filthy rich whilst others are left unable to support their families. A storm is brewing, people are desperate – just what will they be driven to? Suicide? Murder?
In a subtle game of cat and mouse, split loyalties and questionable morals, Alexandra Wood’s thrilling new play looks at the complexities of a mother daughter relationship and, in the growing argument between rich and poor, the girl who is stuck in between.
Merit was first seen at the Theatre Royal Plymouth where it opened on January 29, 2015.
Playwright Alexandra Wood’s previous plays include The Human Ear (Paines Plough/UK tour), Man to Man (Wales Millennium Centre), Ages (Old Vic New Voices), The Initiate (Paines Plough – winner of a Scotsman Fringe First), The Empty Quarter (Hampstead Theatre) The Centre (Islington Community Theatre), an adaptation of Jung Chang’s Wild Swans (The Young Vic/American Repertory Theater), The Lion’s Mouth (Rough Cuts at the Royal Court Theatre), The Eleventh Capital (Royal Court Theatre) and the radio play Twelve Years (BBC Radio 4).
She has written short plays for the Royal Court Theatre, the Oxford School of Drama, Rose Bruford College, Dry Write, Nabokov, Curious Directive and she contributed to Decade (Headlong). She is a past winner of the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright and was the Big Room Playwright-in-Residence at Paines Plough in 2013. She was formerly Literary Manager at the Finborough Theatre.
Director Tom Littler returns to the Finborough Theatre to direct Merit having achieved a record seven OffWestEnd Award nominations last year for his production of Martine by Jean-Jacques Bernard. Other productions at the Finborough Theatre include Jingo: A Farce of War by Charles Wood and a season of rediscoveries comprising The Boatswain’s Mate by Ethel Smyth, The Mollusc by H.H. Davies and The Confidential Clerk by T.S. Eliot.
For more information or to book tickets, call 0844 847 1652 or visit www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/.