As part of her ongoing post-show Q&A series, this Friday 9 August 2019, Mates co-founder Terri Paddock talks to Actually stars Yasmin Paige and Simon Manyonda. We’ve got plenty to talk about here with competing versions of the same night’s hook-up. Got any questions?
After recent events to Equus, Vincent River and Education, Education, Education, I’m back at Trafalgar Studios 2 for the European premiere of a startlingly timely two-hander by American playwright Anna Ziegler, the multi-award-winning author of Photograph 51, which starred Nicole Kidman in the West End in 2015.
One night. Two people. Three truths.
In our age of fake news, victim shaming and #MeToo, Actually is an urgent exploration into our need for an absolute truth when faced with opposing versions; can we ever truly know what happened between two people behind closed doors?
Amber and Tom hook up at a party at their elite American university and spend the night together. They agree on the drinking, they agree on the attraction, but what actually happened between them?
Through conflicting accounts of a college hook-up, Actually boldly delves into the messiest of grey areas and the intersectional complexities of race, religion and gender, controversially picking at our individual biases and internalised prejudices in ‘he said, she said’ cases of sexual consent.
Yasmin Paige (Submarine, The Double, Pramface, Glue onscreen) and Simon Manyonda (His Dark Materials onscreen, The Way of the World, Barbershop Chronicles, King Lear and Alys, Always onstage) star in the European premiere production of Actually, which is directed by Michael Grandage Company Futures bursary recipient Oscar Toeman.
Terri Paddock founded WhatsOnStage.com and the WhatsOnStage Awards, running the company and its events from 1996 to 2013. Terri is also the author of two novels, Come Clean and Beware the Dwarfs, and has previously written for the Evening Standard, Independent, The Times and other national publications. She also produces the annual Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and acts as a digital, content strategy and event consultant for theatre, producers and other clients. She tweets about theatre at @TerriPaddock.
