13

Description

Work out what you want and go for it with all your conviction and don't care if you seem outrageous or stupid... All that's needed, in the end, is belief. An identical, terrifying dream haunts Londoners in the midst of economic gloom and ineffective protest. Whilst the prime minister considers a preventive war, a young man returns home with a vision for the future. Coincidences, omens and visions collide with political reality in this epic new play from the writer of Earthquakes in London. Set in a dark and magical landscape, it depicts a London both familiar and strange, a London staring into the void. In a year which has seen governments fall as the people take to the streets, 13 explores the meaning of personal responsibility, the hold that the past has over the future and the nature of belief itself.

Hailed by The Stage as 'one of the most exciting new talents to emerge in recent times', Mike is currently Pearson Playwright in Residence at The Royal Court Theatre. He won the Writer's Guild Tinniswood and Imison prizes for Not Talking, the Old Vic New Voices Award for Artefacts and an Olivier Award for Cock. His other plays include My Child, Contractions (both Royal Court), Earthquakes in London (Headlong/National Theatre and Love, Love, Love (Paines Plough).

There is a huge amount to admire in Bartlett's writing... [His] ambition is distinctive and immense. -- Henry Hitchings * Evening Standard * Having tackled climate change in Earthquakes in London, [Mike Bartlett] now comes up with another big phantasmagoric fable, one that acquires urgency and force by asking if there is any alternative to freemarket capitalism and unbridled military adventurism... Bartlett has pinned down, in a way few dramatists recently have, the unease that is currently in the air: the sensation that we are sleep-walking into some kind of disaster that may stem from economic collapse, environmental upheaval or the logical extension of the war on terror. Bartlett has his finger on the pulse... [He] has written a powerful, disturbing play about the values by which we live and one that passionately argues for some kind of spiritual revolution. -- Michael Billington * Guardian *