Removal Men - The Yard Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
FOLLOWING the critical success of The Mikvah Project and LINES, The Yard’s Artistic Director Jay Miller will direct Removal Men at The Yard Theatre. A play with songs by M. J. Harding, it will run from Tuesday, November 8 to Saturday, December 10, 2016.
Removal Men tells the story of Mo, a detention officer in an Immigration Removal Centre, who falls in love with a detainee.
Mo is 31. He wears a shirt, a tie, and sometimes even trousers. He’s from Bishops Stortford. Mo’s in trouble. Mo’s in love.
Removal Men is an electrifying story of love, violence and power which gets to the heart of 21st Century Britain, revealing a nation brutalised and confused by systems of inequality.
Incorporating live songs, music and dance, Removal Men is described as an intoxicating explosion of a play from a unique new voice in British theatre, which asks whether compassion is possible in a world of wire fences.
Jay Miller said: “Removal Men is an attempt to look contemporary western culture straight in the eye. To look at the fear and shame and disgust within it. To look, to understand, and then possibly to change.”
Writer M. J. Harding is a founding member of the band Fat White Family, recognised for their subversive, eclectic, brooding mess of musical influences and recently acknowledged as one of the best live bands in the country. Removal Men is Harding’s first full-length work for theatre.
Director Jay Miller founded The Yard in 2011 in collaboration with Practice Architecture and a team of volunteers. Since then, The Yard has built an unrivalled reputation for producing bold, provocative and challenging new theatre with artists who tell stories about the world we live in today.
The cast is Mark Field (Mo), Clare Perkins (Beatrice) and Barnaby Power (George).
Removal Men contains strong language, violence and sexual content and is therefore suitable for ages 14+.
Tickets: From £10 to £15 – available online at www.theyardtheatre.co.uk/.
Time: 8pm.
The Yard Theatre, Unit 2A Queen’s Yard, White Post Lane, Hackney Wick, London, E9 5EN