What would happen if John Milton’s Paradise Lost got a dark, horror-infused make over? The answer comes to The Hope Theatre, in Thomas Arensen’s The Fall, later this month. Book your tickets now!
The new play runs at the Islington venue from 17 March to 4 April 2020.
Deep in the half-light, where the rules of normality no longer apply, nothing is quite as it seems. From the depths of solitude, who will emerge?
The Fall is a modern and darkly-comic retelling of Milton’s Paradise Lost, where the fear of Saw meets a twisted Romeo and Juliet. Reconfigured into a classic story of survival, Arensen explores the themes of desperation, loneliness and falling – in love, apart and from grace.
This multi-sensory tale of intrigue and deceit leaves audiences contemplating a simple choice: make a life together or attempt escape? It locks the audience away with its characters, asking them to question their own loyalties, build trust and consider the consequence of fate.
The Fall is the first full length play by actor and writer Arensen, who has appeared in productions including Pains of Youth (Aces and Eights), Suicide Hotline (Cockpit Theatre) and Eighteen (Stockwell Playhouse). He was inspired to write The Fall by his desire to see something different, dangerous and unapologetic on-stage.
Arensen’s debut play stars Monica Anne, Oliver Lintott and Olivia Gosling, who are all Drama Studio London graduates. Anne recently starred in Flux Theatre’s Something Awful at VAULT Festival, Lintott previously appeared in Rhetoric (Bread & Roses Theatre) and The Snollygoster (Soho Theatre), while Gosling was a Carleton Hobbs Award finalist in 2019.
The trio of performers are directed by Glynne Steele, who directed Julia Cranney‘s award-winning play Empty Beds, which ran at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Arcola Theatre. Steele also runs weekly acting workshop scratch night Dangerosity.
The Fall plays as part of a busy spring season at The Hope Theatre, the first under new Artistic Director, Kennedy Bloomer. Among the shows coming to the influential pub theatre are provocative tale of love, loss and Miley Cyrus, Graceful, psychological thriller The Fox, and satirical monologue King.