Surrey-based LynchPin Productions will be staging the European premiere of the award-winning play Apples in Winter by Jennifer Fawcett, directed by Claire Parker, at London’s Playground Theatre from 5-15 October 2022 (press night is 6 October).
One Mother’s Love
One Last Request
One Apple Pie
Imagine someone you love does something unspeakable.
This is a play about the mother of a monster.
And the tenacious nature of love.
And how to make a really good apple pie.
The one-woman play centres on an American mother – Miriam (Edie Campbell) – whose son committed an exceptionally violent crime. He has been on death row for 22 years. In a few hours the state will execute him. He is permitted the ritual of choosing a last meal: he asks for his mother’s apple pie.
As Miriam shows the audience how to make the perfect pie, they watch her attempt to understand what happened to her son – and how everything changed that night 22 years ago.
The play provides a rare opportunity to hear an often silenced and ostracised voice: that of the mother of a perpetrator. Apples in Winter is an extraordinarily powerful and yet deeply compassionate play that challenges the audience to reflect on the impact of violent crime on its hidden victims. It journeys into the heart of difficult and charged questions about justice, forgiveness and what it is to try and love unconditionally.
Apples in Winter at the Playground Theatre, London gives a heartfelt voice to the hidden victims of violent crime
Apples in Winter is the winner of the National New Play Network Smith Prize for Political Theatre and the Susan Glaspell Award. US-based Canadian author Jennifer Fawcett said: “I could not be more thrilled that LynchPin Theatre is producing this play in England.”
Responses from an invited audience to LynchPin’s rehearsed reading of Apples in Winter in March 2020 included:
“Remarkable, inspiring play… Love endures” – Dr Alison Frater, chair National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance 2015-21
“This play has the potential to be a catalyst for change” – Prison volunteer
“A mesmeric performance” – John Locke, actor and director
Director Claire Parker is joined in the creative team by understudy Miriam/dialect coach Suzanne Parke, lighting designer/stage manager Elizabeth Tooms, set designer Andrew Hodson and Philip Parker (production/marketing).
A key feature of LynchPin’s production is the programme of after-show discussions to explore the play’s themes which will feature contributions from criminal justice practitioners, those involved in human rights and restorative justice, and individuals with lived experience of the criminal justice system. The 20th World Day Against the Death Penalty falls on 10 October.
LynchPin Productions, founded in 1999 by director Jack Lynch and actor Edie Campbell, creates compelling theatre through biography, rehearsed readings and productions, with a particular focus on expressing seldom-heard voices.
Bios
Edie Campbell (Miriam) Theatre credits include: Alice Comyns Carr Rotten Perfect (Watts Gallery); Mrs Cheveley An Ideal Husband (Electric Theatre); Henry V/Prince Hal The Wooden O; Elsa Road to Mecca; Célimène The Misanthrope; Rosie Dancing at Lughnasa (Riverside Theatre, Iowa); Bess Abundance; Me HIM (University of Iowa Theatres); Emily Stilson Wings (Liar’s Theatre, Iowa); and Alison Look Back in Anger (Pegasus, Oxford). Edie continues to perform LynchPin’s one-woman play Emily Dickinson & I which has toured in the UK, Europe and North America.
Claire Parker (Director) worked extensively as an actress on stage & screen, including a season at the National Theatre and several ITV and BBC series. On her return to the UK from a period living in France, Claire began collaborating with LynchPin as a performer, writer and director and her play Rotten Perfect was produced at the Watts Gallery, Compton, in 2017. LynchPin toured her most recent play, When the Cat’s Away, in 2018 in the south east of England. Claire directed the UK premiere of George Purefoy Tilson’s Amelia in 2019 at the Electric Theatre in Guildford.
Canadian-born Jennifer Fawcett (Playwright) is the winner of the NNPN Smith Prize and the Susan Glaspell Award for Apples in Winter. She won the NEFA National Theatre Project Award (with her company Working Group Theatre) for Out of Bounds, the Kennedy Center’s National Science Playwriting Award for Atlas of Mud, and she was nominated for the ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award for Birth Witches. Her plays have been produced at Phoenix Theatre (Indianapolis), Centenary Stage Company (Hackettstown, NJ), Riverside Theatre (Iowa City), the Source Festival (Washington, DC), Hancher Auditorium (University of Iowa), Available Light Theatre (Columbus), Uprising Theatre Company (Minneapolis), Halcyon Theatre (Chicago) and the Drilling Company (New York), among others.
