Simon Manyonda
Electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse compete to create a sustainable system and market it to the American people
For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. Follow along as we leap from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day.
Alex arrives uninvited to a party and after a set of excruciating interactions with other guests,is forced to recount a memorable dream he has had. A meditation on oneiric experience in cinema, mental health, talking dogs and fishermen.
There’s a sense that time is running out. Our narrator, Simon, is like a man sinking in quicksand. He’s a man of routine. Rising, dressing, travelling to work on the DLR. Every day is the same. His sense of self is slipping away as he becomes (perhaps literally) someone else. It’s a similar story for Dr Benham, stuck in his STD clinic watching a parade of patients come and go. In his parallel story of metamorphosis he’s being spat out by his own life. He too is becoming a different person, from the feet up.
A tale of music and memory is unspooled through a schoolgirl's mixtape.
An aged king decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, according to which of them is most eloquent in praising him. His favourite, Cordelia, says nothing. Simon Russell Beale, whose recent appearances at the National include Timon of Athens and Collaborators, takes the title role in Shakespeare’s tragedy.
A special forces veteran, an uptight property developer, an influencer with half a million followers and an incompetent instructor are thrown together on a high-end fear of flying course. The course's final challenge is an experience flight from London to Iceland, which ends up being a horrendous ordeal. Lost in Iceland, freezing and terrified, they must find a way of facing their fears and working together to spread their wings... and fly.
Based on Roald Dahl's 1973 classic book 'The Witches', the story tells the scary, funny and imaginative tale of a seven year old boy who has a run-in with some real-life witches!
