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Fresh Mountain Air
Written by Michael Eichler
(January 2025) The Drayton Arms Theatre
Fresh Mountain Air is a story of guns, violence, racism, and politics and the deep divisions affecting all of us.
It follows three young American women who join a hiking organisation and meet for the first time in a secluded cabin in the woods. They return from their first hike to find the innkeeper and their three rental cars gone. It is getting dark, the nearest town is twenty miles away and there is no internet or phone service.
The women find a radio and decide to stay overnight and hike to town in the morning. They hear a radio bulletin announcing there has been a prison break at a nearby maximum security facility. They find a gun in the drawer. Is the threat outside the cabin or within?
Death & The Cat
Written by Robert Emlyn Slater
(November 2024) The Drayton Arms Theatre
Death and his pet cat, Panther have been guiding the souls of the dead into the afterlife for time untold. Until they have a falling out, that is, and the Grim Reaper's pet cat runs away.
Alone, angry, and missing his best friend, Death goes rogue, sending the universe tumbling into chaos. And that's just the beginning...
Featuring gods, demons, a harrowing taxi ride, a spooky hotel, and a pub in Wales, this is a tale exploring life, death, friendship, and the lengths we'll go for the ones we love.
Home Sweet Home
Written by Amalia
(July 2024) Riverside Studios
Six years after her childhood home was destroyed by wildfires, Ellie travels from London to Greece with the intention of selling it. When she comes face to face with her childhood dreams, first loves and heartbreaks, and journey of migration, will she decide to completely cut ties in order to leave this most recent tragedy behind? 'Home, Sweet Home' is a contemporary coming of age story that captures the tangible and personal impact of climate change on vulnerable regions across the world.
Mother's Day
Written by Giles Fernando
(February 2024) The Old Lion Pub Theatre
A one-woman comedy-drama about family and dreams
Pauline is not an extra, she’s an additional actress: she adds to the scene. After an unexpected blessing in the form of Samantha, light-of-her-life, she battles a jealous mother, an unhelpful husband, and film sets without crèches, to succeed as a working mother in film and TV, landing her dream role in Eastenders. Or does she? Should her daughter, Samantha, follow in her footsteps? And who would have made a better Florence in Angel of Crimea, Pauline or her daughter?
Mothers’ Day deals with the taboo of competition between mothers and daughters down the generations, and the tension between wanting your offspring to succeed, and wanting the opportunities they have for yourself.
Based on The DVD of Me by Davina Leonard and Giles Fernando.
Flip - A Rehearsed Reading
Written by Josh Bird and Giles Fernando
(September 2023) The Other Palace
A new skateboard musical as part of a lunchtime series of new musical readings 'Musical Bites' at The Other Palace with the nominated song This Moment.
Karate Kid-meets-skateboarding, with a twist.Sam, when she fails at sports day, battles her headmistress mother, her demons and her jealous best friend, to follow in her absent father's footsteps.
Themes of competition versus collaboration and talent versus practice.
Chemistry
Written by Sam Chittenden
(2023) Brighton Fringe Festival May 2023
(2021) Watford Fringe Festival October 2021
(2021) Hastings Fringe Festival July 2021
Chemistry is set in a future world in which people can’t touch. Instead of sexual intercourse, babies are conceived through IVF, overseen by robot operators known as Fosterers.
In order to maintain human involvement in the reproductive process, prospective parents are required to meet so they can approve their genetic matching and to agree to the child being raised by the Fosterers and taught from the Rulings.
In one such pairing meeting, the sophisticated Bea and first-timer Jay try to navigate the process and their responses to each other.
Nominated for an Offie Award and an International Fringe Encore Award.
Dulce et Decorum Est: The Unknown Soldiers
Written by Jan van der Black
(October 2022) The Lion and Unicorn Theatre
Following a sell-out run at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Polymorph Theatre are bringing this production to the stages of London.
The Somme, 1916
On the 1st of July, Tommy goes “over the top”. The only survivor from his home town, he’s wounded, broken, forever changed. He returns, but he can never get home.
Crete, 1941
On the 20th of May, Ellen’s fiancee goes MIA while defending Maleme airfield from German paratroopers. Nobody knows what has happened to him.
London, 1941
Ellen and Tommy meet in a cellar during a Luftwaffe raid. As their stories unfold, an incredible connection that binds them together emerges.
Brilliant Traces
Written by Cindy Lou Johnson
(2022) The White Bear Theatre
Deep in the Alaskan wilderness, a runaway bride finds shelter from a blizzard in a cabin occupied by a hermit. They’re stuck, but these two lonely strangers alternately repel and attract one another. The storm outside imprisoning them pales in comparison to their traumas. Will these snow-bound refugees find each other?
Returning to London stages for the first time in 10 years, this little-known American gem marks the debut of eMPhasis Theatre Company.
Nominated for 2 Offie Awards.
In the wrong hands there are plenty of pitfalls this play could fall into, but Penny Gkritzapi’s direction ensures that’s not the case. - Mike Wells, The Reviews Hub, 2022
Before An Inspector Calls
Written by Jan van der Black
(2021) Chiswick Playhouse
Inspired by JB Priestley’s ‘An Inspector Calls’, this project was intended to be Polymorph’s production at Edinburgh Fringe 2020 until circumstances intervened.
The idea for the show arose as an exploration of a possible ‘prequel’ to the Priestley play. The ‘reality’ or otherwise of the Inspector in that work is subject to endless discussion and also the origins of the motivation of that character. The young woman, ‘Eva Smith’, likewise is deliberately not necessarily a real individual and does not appear in the original play.
Written by Jan van der Black
(2019) Edinburgh Fringe, Polymorph Theatre
The story of Emmeline and Richard Pankhurst and the suffragette movement. This couple were the architects of two of the greatest steps forward in the fight for women's rights in Britain. In Votes for Women!, Polymorph Theatre examine what brought these two remarkable people together and the effect they would have on the cause of women's rights. Richard Pankhurst was the champion of women's property rights, while Emmeline Pankhurst drove the fight for women's suffrage to new heights and new notoriety. Tragically separated by Richard's untimely death, the campaign continued. Votes For Women!
Dulce et Decorum Est: The Unknown Soldiers
Written by Jan van der Black
(2018) Edinburgh Fringe, Polymorph Theatre
The Somme, 1916
On the 1st of July, Tommy goes “over the top”. The only survivor from his home town, he’s wounded, broken, forever changed. He returns, but he can never get home.
Crete, 1941
On the 20th of May, Ellen’s fiancee goes MIA while defending Maleme airfield from German paratroopers. Nobody knows what has happened to him.
London, 1941
Ellen and Tommy meet in a cellar during a Luftwaffe raid. As their stories unfold, an incredible connection that binds them together emerges.
Milkteeth
Written by Hector McCormick
(2021) Catalyst Festival 2021
Alex returns to his childhood village on the eve of his father’s wedding. As he struggles to reconcile the past, a darker force emerges, revealing fragments of his troubled upbringing. This play explores heritage, identity and diaspora against the backdrop of economic decline and commercial exploitation in modern Greece.
10 Rillington Place
Written by Jan van der Black
(2017) Edinburgh Fringe, Polymorph Theatre
"From the condemned cell at Pentonville Prison and the infamous address, the latest one-man show from Jan van der Black examines the psyche and the soul of the serial killer, John Reginald Halliday Christie. Although forever associated with the tragic case of Timothy Evans, Christie was responsible for at least eight murders, and this play examines his motivations, his own admissions and the circumstances and activities that led him to the condemned cell. Drawing on transcripts from trials, medical reports on Christie, we reveal the story behind the story of one of Britain's most notorious serial killers."
Abberline's Artefact
Written by Jan van der Black
(2016) Edinburgh Fringe, Polymorph Theatre
1888: Murders in Whitechapel.
1929: Frederick Abberline, the man who never caught Jack the Ripper, dies.
2016. Retired shopkeeper John Davis has been experiencing blackouts.
Ever since he found Abberline’s Artefact.
A ghost story within a ghost story.
W.A.N.T.
Extracts from Bertolt Brecht, Anton Chekhov, Sarah Kane, August Strindberg and Tennessee Williams
(2015) Stratford Circus Theatre
"The day when it will be possible for a woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to abase herself but to assert herself- on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger
Simone De Beauvoir.
And tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me."
- Sarah Kane
Women with power and weakness, born through contemporary plays meet together and speak of their everyday concerns. Nina, Mrs X, the Jewish wife and Blanche De Bois share their idea of what it is like to be a woman. Revealing their true selves through Sarah Kane’s Crave.
With:
Emilie Maybank
Stefani Ariza
Lauren Stones
Chloe Freer