Finborough Theatre January to March 2013

The Finborough Theatre, a fringe venue in Earl's Court, west London, has announced its January to March season...

Productions playing Tuesdays to Sunday...

Somersaults by Iain Finlay Macleod. 2 to 26 Jan 2013. Directed by Russell Bolam, produced with Luke Holbrook. James is a successful entrepreneur living the metropolitan life with a beautiful wife and a swanky London flat. But when the creditors move in and his wife moves out, James suddenly finds he's left with nothing. Nothing but words. James' father is dying - his last connection to his childhood and the language of his birth, Scots Gaelic. With this link gone, James fears he will simply cease to exist. As the words start to slip away, he journeys home to confront his past and search for his true identity - as he desperately struggles to remember the language of his birth and the word for 'somersault'.

London Wall by John Van Druten. 29 Jan to 23 Feb 2013. Directed by Tricia Thorns, produced with Graham Cowley for Two's Company. London Wall is a wryly comic look at the life of women office workers in the 1930s. In a solicitor's office in the City, Brewer, the office manager, sees pretty new 19-year-old typist Pat as fair game. As some of the more experienced secretaries try to warn her, and others leave her to her fate, her steady boyfriend - an idealistic young writer - desperately tries to win her back. Meanwhile, cynical Miss Janus' romantic life seems to be over as she is jilted by her lover at the desperate age of 35...

Facts by Arthur Milner. 26 Feb to 23 March 2013. Directed by Caitlin McLeod, produced with Worn Red Theatre. The West Bank, 2012. A prominent American archaeologist is found dead, killed by a single shot to the heart, but who could hate an archaeologist enough to murder him? As two detectives - one Israeli, one Palestinian - work together to solve the case, they learn that the victim was making outlandish claims: what if the Exodus had never happened? No Moses, no slaves, and no Promised Land... Their prime suspect - an Israeli settler - is clearly guilty of something, but of what? In a world where fact and fiction have become blurred, what are they really looking for?

Productions playing Sundays & Mondays Eves and Tuesday matinees...

So Great a Crime , written & directed by David Gooderson. 6 to 22 Jan 2013. Produced with D2 & Co. Cast includes Louie Bayliss, Lyndam Gregory, Stuart McGugan, Hayward Morse, James Woolley, Philip York. Well loved national hero, or predatory paedophile? So Great a Crime tells the true story of 'Fighting Mac' - Sir Hector MacDonald - who rose from humble beginnings as a crofter's son through the ranks of the British Army to become a knight of the realm, hero of the Battle of Omdurman and Queen Victoria's favourite general. His active soldiering days over, he was appointed General Officer Commanding in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), but soon finds himself in conflict with the high born elite who run the colony. Allegations of liaisons with young boys surface and MacDonald is forced to return home. Rather than face a court martial, he shoots himself in a Paris hotel. But was he guilty? Or was he the victim of a plot fabricated by an English Establishment, motivated by jealousy and snobbery, at a Gaelic-speaking upstart who got above himself?

Saer Doliau ('Doll Maker') by Gwenlyn Parry. 3 to 19 Feb 2013. (Performed in Welsh with English subtitles. )Directed by Aled Pedrick, produced with Sion Alun Davies and Louise Best for Invertigo Theatre Company. Doll mender Ifans is peacefully at work in his wood workshop in rural Wales. Until suddenly his entire life is ripped apart by the unannounced intrusion of two strangers, a Girl and a Lad. As they torment him with their own secret agenda and mind games, Ifans loses his grip on his reality, leaving him adrift in a world which is changed too quickly. As the two strangers play one final deadly game, and he is left deserted by everyone, Ifans is left questioning the purpose of his entire existence...

Laburnum Grove J.B. Priestley. 3 to 19 March 2013. Directed by Oscar Toeman, produced with Indigo One. An exploration of greed and dishonesty in suburban England. Ferndale, Laburnum Grove. A quiet, residential address in one of the newer north London suburbs. George Radfern, decent, respectable citizen and householder spends his Sunday evenings in his greenhouse, listening to Handel on the wireless. But when his grasping in-laws and daughter's obnoxious beau try to coax more money from him, George makes an unlikely confession.