After a sell-out run at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Taggart creator Glenn Chandler’s new, award-winning stage play KIDS PLAY transfers to London’s Above the Stag Theatre next week, for a strictly limited season, with a new cast. Despite the title, this is very much not a children’s show! Time to get booking!
KIDS PLAY, written and directed by Glenn Chandler, runs at London’s Above The Stag Theatre from 18 September to 14 October 2018, with a press night on 21 September. This latest transfer follows Chandler’s hit 2017 production of Lord Dismiss Us at the theatre.
KIDS PLAY is about the things a lonely boy will do for love. Theo is a gay 17-year-old student in need of cash. Greg is a married businessman with an odd fetish. When the two meet up in a hotel room in Brighton during the conference season, a financial transaction takes place between them, but nothing turns out quite as either of them expected.
An emotional corkscrew of a play with surprises galore, KIDS PLAY takes us on an often hilarious and sometimes dark journey into the psycho-sexual needs of two lost souls on a hot summer night.
Joseph Clarke & David Mullen star in London
The Edinburgh production of KIDS PLAY was a sell-out at The Space, receiving a slew of five-star reviews. It also won a 2018 Bobby Award – a replica of Edinburgh’s famous canine statue Grayfriar’s Bobby – given each year by theatre website Broadway Baby to a handful of productions, considered by a judging panel to be the very best of the festival.
In London, Joseph Clarke and David Mullen play Theo and Greg, taking over from Clement Charles and Gareth Watkins, who originated the roles in Edinburgh.
KIDS PLAY is written and directed by Glenn Chandler, the creator of Taggart, the world’s longest-running detective series. Glenn wrote previous Above The Stag Theatre shows Fanny and Stella: The Shocking True Story, The Sins of Jack Saul and Cleveland Street The Musical. With his own company, Boys of the Empire Productions, he has also transferred his recent Edinburgh hits Lord Dismiss Us and Sandel to the theatre.
With KIDS PLAY, Chandler returns to Above The Stag with a compelling new drama that defies expectations and continually pulls the rug out from beneath the audience’s feet.
Boys of the Empire Productions celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. It launched in 2008 with Glenn Chandler‘s Boys of the Empire, the company’s first Edinburgh sellout, a schoolboy satire on the Iraq war. The company’s productions of Chandler’s Lord Dismiss Us and Sandel also premiered in Edinburgh and transferred to Above the Stag, in 2017 and 2013, respectively. Lord Dismiss Us was nominated for four Off West End Awards, including Best New Play and Best Production. Meanwhile, Taggart, now celebrating its 35th anniversary, still holds the record as the longest running television detective series in the world.
Above the Stag’s new home
About Above the Stage
Known for its focus on gay-themed work, Above The Stag is the UK’s only dedicated LGBT+ theatre, and produces the vast majority of its shows in-house. It was founded in 2008 in a function room above the now-demolished Stag gay pub in Victoria, before moving to its first Vauxhall venue in 2013, growing a large and loyal audience. Above The Stag presents drama, comedies, musicals and cabaret, an award-winning annual pantomime, play readings and exhibitions.
Above the Stag’s new home, in railway arches near Vauxhall station, opened this year with a production of Jonathan Harvey‘s Beautiful Thing. The venue is housed in two connecting railway arches on Albert Embankment and comprises two theatre spaces – a 100-seat end-on theatre and a flexible 60+ seat studio – as well as a bar and coffee shop and rehearsal space.
