Barbarians

Description

It's 1977. Youth unemployment is at an all-time high and the pound is at an all-time low. Paul, Jan and Louis are bored, broke and demoralized by the hand that they've been dealt. How will these young lads fair with the odds stacked against them? How will they cope? Cut off from society with no-where to turn, the play resonates with a modern audience who will no doubt recognize the disaffected youth of 1970s Britain. Barrie Keeffe's tragically dark play crackles with tension throughout, building to a twisted and dramatic end. This programme text edition was published to coincide with the revival of the play by Tooting Arts Club on 3rd October 2015, staged at the former Central St Martins School of Art on the Charing Cross Road, London.

Barrie Keeffe (b. 1945) is a well-known English dramatist and writer, whose plays include Only a Game (1973), A Sight of Glory (1975), Here Comes the Sun (1976), My Girl (1989), I Only Want to Be With You (1995), The Long Good Friday (1997), Shadows on the Sun (2001), Still Killing Time (2006) and two trilogies: Gimme Shelter and Barbarians. He has also been resident writer at the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Shaw Theatre and the Soho Poly Theatre and Associate Writer at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. He taught dramatic writing at City University in London and in 2010 he gained the title of Doctor of Letters by the University of Warwick.

Theatre at its most vital and alive * Time Out (on the 2012 production by Tooting Arts Club) * Unforgettable show with unflaggingly brilliant dialogue . . . Keeffe's unflaggingly brilliant dialogue flies with the vernacular as a vehicle for a linguistic spree. . . . an unforgettable show that sensitises you to the comparable waste of young people's potential today. * Independent * Keeffe gives his characters eloquence and fire * Observer * Barrie Keefe's 1977 play about disaffected youth makes for a diliciously grim dessert. * Time Out London * gut-punch ending * The Times * Barrie Keeffe's late 70s depiction of a Britain as a scraphead of empty promises for the young strongly resonates today. Three linked plays explore a society that has closed its gates on mates Jan, Paul and Louis. [...] a blistering indictment of British society * Stage * Barrie Keeffe's play could barely seem more urgent . . . Keeffe's fable of three young working-class men adrift . . . still has the capacity to sting. . . . a study of needling male aggression and anxiety, full of stifled poetry: A Clockwork Orange in a more desperate key; Waiting for Godot recomposed to a soundtrack of furious punk. * Guardian * it brims with snotty energy, gallows humour and lashings of bile. * Daily Telegraph *