If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep

Description

"I believe that open markets and free enterprise are the best imaginable force for improving human wealth and happiness. And I would go further: where they work properly, they can actually promote morality." David Cameron, January 2012 Anders Lustgarten's play is an exploration of our current government's politics of austerity and a look at possible alternatives. If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep was supported by the Harold Pinter Playwright's Award which is given annually by Pinter's widow Lady Antonia Fraser.

Anders Lustgarten is Pearson Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre, where his first two plays were produced. He is a political activist, has taught on Death Row, been arrested by the Turkish secret police, and holds a PhD in Chinese politics. He won the inaugural Harold Pinter Playwrights Award with a commission from the Royal Court in 2011.

The play has bags of vigour and offers a bracing attack on financial capitalism . . . What Lustgarten has to say is vitally important. -- Michael Billington * Guardian * Lustgarten's disgust is bracing as he begs to differ, big-time, from David Cameron ... Lustgarten is right to castigate the cosiness of much political drama -- Paul Taylor * Independent * [Lustgarten] is a fierce writer whose activism blends intellectual curiosity and idealism -- Henry Hitchings * Evening Standard * If you don't like dramas that wear their hearts on their sleeve then this might not be the show for you. Like the activists it puts on stage it doesn't much care what you think. It tries to tell it as it is, with all its confusion, naivety and idealism - and that to me is very attractive and even rather moving ... this is a perceptive, provocative and poetically political reading of the state we're all in. -- Aleks Sierz * Arts Desk *