WHITE BEAR NEW SEASON

 

RedNeedle Productions presents

JAMES BONNEY MP by Ian Buckley

20th June – 8th July (Tues-Sat 7:30pm, Sun 4pm)

Matinees Sat 1st & 8th July – 2:30pm

Tickets £15 (£12 conc)

 

The brilliant new comedy from RedNeedle’s Ian Buckley.

 

James Bonney, the swashbuckling moderate, the (ladies) man of the people doesn’t take kindly to enemies within - not his new leader who believes in something called socialism nor his local rival who thinks he’s sold out.

 

Whose business is it if he’s having an affair? His political rival lives with his daughter while his agent fancies his wife. No one said life was perfect.

 

Can James maintain his position, crush internal enemies and secure his place in history? And what does he have to do to bag that shadow cabinet post?

 

 

 

 

The Weir by Conor McPherson

11th – 15th July 2017

 

It is 1997 and a group of people gather together in a remote, farmhouse pub on a windy hillside area of rural Ireland, chatting, joking and telling supernatural stories to impress a young woman who has moved into the local area. But through this communal sharing the characters open up to each other to reveal a different kind of haunting – the loneliness, loss and regret in their lives, and their need to give and receive solace in the face of the unfathomable mystery of mortality.

 

This modern classic and timeless masterpiece by Conor McPherson, originally performed at The Royal court Theatre, continues to be one of the nation’s favourites and was voted as one of the top 100 favourite plays of the 20th century in a National Theatre poll. It won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1999.

 

 

 

Sheep by David Cantor

17th July – 5th August, 7pm

 

It’s been twenty-one nights since Dexy last slept. It could be down to his choice of pillow. Duck Down. It could be down the heating in his flat. Nonexistent. Or it could be the fact his girlfriend’s missing, the police are scouring the streets and Dexy’s past is catching up with him.

 

Ensconced in his third floor flat, over the course of an evening Dexy attempts to cast his mind back and fit the relevant pieces together, but as the blare of the sirens gets louder and night turns to morning the lines between dreams and reality and rational thinking and insanity become ever more blurred.

 

As if this wasn’t enough, Dexy is visited by three very different people during the night.

 

 

 

 

An Instinct for Kindness by Chris Larner

Fri 28th and Sat 29th July, 8:45pm

 

In November 2010, Chris Larner accompanied his ex-wife Allyson to Dignitas, in Switzerland. He returned with an empty wheel chair and a story to tell.

 

In this acclaimed, moving, bittersweet and sometimes comic one-man show, Chris reflects on the circumstances, morality and humanity surrounding that journey, and the wider ethics of the contentious issue of assisted dying.

 

First performed at Edinburgh in 2011 (where it won a Fringe First award and was recommended by BBC’s Newsnight as a highlight of the fringe) Chris returns to The White Bear for two performances only.

 

 

 

Catastrophists - An Original Play by Jack Stanley

8 - 26 August

 

GREEN

 

You’re just quietly preparing for civilisation to collapse and really, we couldn’t ask for anything more as neighbours

 

Raf and Harry have well-paid jobs, a lovely semi in leafy Barnes and a brand new second residence in the heart of Wiltshire. In the neighbouring field, Claudia and Peter have a chewed up vegetable patch, a carbon-neutral yurt complex and an absolute conviction that the apocalypse is imminent.

 

Raf and Harry invite Claudia and Peter over for an apology meal after a misguided midnight call of nature in the field. But pleasantries soon switch to politics and the pulled pork is replaced by pulling punches when the hosts start testing the commune members’ commitment to their cause. As the night descends into all-out anarchy, the consequences prove to be apocalyptic.

 

In an uncertain age where the threat of global disaster continues to linger, ‘Catastrophists’ is a darkly comic play all about class, cooking and communes – and whether any of us are quite as civilised as we like to think we are.