The Tricycle Theatre has developed a reputation over the past decade as one of the UK's most innovative companies: producing socially-engaged drama for the stage, staging exhibitions in their specially-installed gallery and programming a diverse range of film seasons in their luxurious cinema (which remains one of the better viewing experiences in London). It is, though, for their stage plays that their reputation in recent years has been cemented as one of the most trustworthy and thought-provoking in the capital.
The theatre is renowned for producing what have become known as Tribunal Plays, newly-written dramas based on public testimony of recent and current political events. Audiences in the past few years have been treated to plays based on the death of David Kelly, Stephen Lawrence, the Bloody Sunday atrocity, detainees at Guantanamo, and arguably the theatre's most praised season: The Great Game, a series of portmanteau shows incorporating twelve short plays played across three evenings. The latest show to open at the celebrated venue is The Bomb - a partial history, two nights of ten short short plays exploring the major threat of post-war times.
Written by names such as Zinnie Harris and David Greig, The Bomb takes as its starting point that eponymous nuclear threat. The show extends the theatre's remit to interrogating the contemporary situation by drawing parallels to historical events, politics and rhetoric, and the fears of the public-at-large. A seriously well-drawn out series of scenarios, tightly-written, gently balanced and acted, The Bomb is a fitting episode in what is the final year for The Tricycle's Director, Nicolas Kent. The driving force behind the theatre's rejuvenation, Kent has over his twenty-eight years at the helm successfully reinstalled the notion that theatre has a responsibility to the public to re-draw the balance between what art can do to explain the structures of modern life. If you've not visited this great venue, do it now.
The Bomb - a partial history is at The Tricycle Theatre until 01 April.
