Blake Friedmann Theatre News

Roger Spottiswoode's stage adaptation of William Golding's THE SPIRE has completed its world-premiere run at the Salisbury Playhouse, directed by Gareth Machin.

'An outstanding piece of theatre, thought provoking and utterly absorbing. Not to be missed.' -- What's on Stage

'A truly stunning, must-see production.' -- The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald

'Tense, compelling and historically interesting, another excellent Playhouse production.' -- The Southern Daily Echo

Meanwhile, Paul Hodson's Edinburgh Fringe First winner MEETING JOE STRUMMER is being revived at The Cockpit in Marylebone until 22nd December.

Paul's play tells the story of Nick and Steve, whose lives were transformed by Joe Strummer and The Clash.

Tickets are available here.

'Magnificently simple, heartfelt, clear and brave...one of only a couple of shows on this fringe that have actually made me cry, and many other people in the audience too.' -- Joyce MacMillan, The Scotsman 

'Punk defined a generation of Thatcher's children who went on to sell out and become something in the City. But where did all that idealism and integrity go? Paul Hodson's two-hander is not just a piece of nostalgia, but an entertaining account of how time slips away and how, even years later, we can still recall what it felt like to be 16.' -- Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

'Glowing with warmth, humour and self-deprecation… sincere and inspiring' -- Metro

WHEN WOMEN WEE In Production

Rachel Hirons's Edinburgh Fringe hit WHEN WOMEN WEE ("More hilarious than you could possibly imagine" -- What's on Stage) has been adapted into a film. The play had a successful revival at the Soho Theatre earlier this year, and the feature version begins shooting this week. Rachel wrote the film adaptation of the play. Damian Jones produces and MJ Delaney directs. The film stars Sheridan Smith, Jamie Winstone, Kate Nash, and Oona Chaplin as the eponymous women.

Top South African producer Helena Spring wins film rights to Lauren Beukes’s ZOO CITY

After a closely contested auction, the rights to Lauren Beukes's Arthur C. Clarke winning noir thriller have been awarded to hugely experienced producer Helena Spring. ZOO CITY has garnered big sales figures, multiple awards and universal critical acclaim, so needless to say competition among producers was fierce for the opportunity to adapt the novel. But Helena's proactive, writer-friendly approach and imaginative proposals in the end proved irresistible.

'I'm delighted to have secured the film and television rights for Zoo City,' Helena commented, 'it is a ground breaking, magical novel begging for a life on the big screen. Lauren's storytelling is masterful - edgy and futuristic, unique yet universal. It is high in entertainment value yet emotionally charged: a dream project for any producer.'

Spring has nearly 30 years experience in the film industry, producing over 20 films, and having worked with the likes of Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy; United 93) and Academy Award® winner Tom Hooper (The King's Speech). She was also responsible for the first South African film to be recognised at the Academy Awards®; Darrell Roodt's Yesterday earned a Best Foreign Picture nomination in 2004.

Lauren, who will have first option to write the screenplay of her novel, was extremely excited by the prospect of ZOO CITY coming to life on the big screen. 'Every novelist dreams of a movie deal - but you actually want more than that. You want to find a producer of great vision and integrity and experience who fundamentally gets the book and understands how to transform it into an entirely different creature based on the same genetic material. I'm thrilled that it's being produced in South Africa - for an international audience.'

Zakes Mda’s SOMETIMES THERE IS A VOID picked by the New York Times as a Notable Book for 2012

Acclaimed South African author Zakes Mda's candid autobiography SOMETIMES THERE IS A VOID has been selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the Notable Books for 2012. The memoir is published in South Africa by Penguin and is published by Farrar Straus & Giroux in the US.

In this memoir Mda weaves together past and present to give an intensely personal story of his development in life, in love and in learning, and the events and people who shaped him. Forced to follow his father, PAC 'founding spirit' A P Mda, into exile in Lesotho (then still Basutoland) at the age of fourteen, Zakes initially finds freedom from close parental discipline irresistible and becomes a frequenter of shebeens and an exponent of fast living, but he also becomes politicised during this time. We are given a fascinating insight into the growth and development of both the PAC and the ANC in exile, as well as contemporary social history.

Rob Nixon of The New York Times reviewed SOMETIMES THERE IS A VOID earlier in 2012 noting that, 'Mda's greatest gift is his Dickensian social range [and] his ability to generate characters from diverse backgrounds, colluding and colliding across the barriers erected to divide them… Mda takes us deep into his country's literal interior, those rural regions that, in most South African writing, are pushed to the margins… Yet, as his autobiography discloses, on the stage and on the page Mda has found a different kind of continuity through the steadying presence of imaginative belonging. To his credit, in a deeply unsettled life, he has nurtured this capacity to find within the creative act itself new, reviving forms of homecoming.'

For the full list of notable reads, click here.

 
Praise for SOMETIMES THERE IS A VOID:
 
'Mda's deeper struggles parallel those of all South Africans seeking identity and freedom…. It is easy to become immersed in this memoir." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
'Fascinating… During my five-year stint as Africa bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor, I struggled in vain to find a memoir like this one.' -- Scott Baldauf, The Christian Science Monitor

'The narration of his personal revelations is compelling, honest, amusing, sometimes tragi-comic …This is Zakes Mda's story. It must be read.' -- Maureen Isaacson, The Sunday Independent

Praise for Zakes Mda:

'A voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration' -- The New York Times
 
'For a long time, white writers dominated South African literature - Paton, Brink, Gordimer, Coetzee. Post-apartheid, Zakes Mda, looks like the great South African novelist of his generation, a writer rich in both imagination and ironic political attitude.'                                 -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

'In novel after novel, Zakes Mda seems to have cultivated a mode of writing in which the realistic and the magical co-exist with unruffled ease.' -- Harry Garuba, Independent

'Zakes Mda is among the most acclaimed exponents of a new artistic freedom. His fiction has a beguiling lyricism and humour, revelling in the beauty of aloe-covered mountains or Cape marine life.' -- Maya Jaggi, The Guardian

The Boom Jennies’ MISSION IMPROBABLE airs on Radio 4

All-girl comedy group The Boom Jennies are on Radio 4 on Wednesday 28th November at 11.15pm with their first commissioned radio show, MISSION IMPROBABLE. 

Frustrated reporter Jane has decided that if you can't find the story, you should be the story, and reinvented herself as an 'adventure journalist'. Roping in two underachieving friends, she's set a course for white-knuckle adventure, and nothing's going to stop her, except perhaps her choice of companions and her own lack of ability. Each week Jane's blunt ambition launches the team at a different, ludicrously challenging mission which has more than a faint whiff of shameless self-promotion about it. Each week they fail. 

MISSION IMPROBABLE was written by The Boom Jennies and produced by Dave Lamb and Richie Webb of Top Dog Productions.

You can also catch another performance of The Boom Jennies' hilarious Edinburgh show on Monday 3rd Dec at the Hen and Chickens in Islington.