WHAT'S ON at THE LION AND UNICORN
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Something Clean
29 - 30 April
Charlotte has been a mother for nineteen years, a wife for three decades, and a respectable community member her entire life. But when her only child is incarcerated for sexual assault, her once-immaculate world is forever tainted. Tony-Award nominated playwright Selina Fillinger (POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, 2022) soars in this intimate drama following one woman struggling to make sense of her own grief, love, and culpability.
Flashbang (2026) - UK Tour
The Lion & Unicorn Theatre
5 - 6 May
noun: flashbang
- a grenade that produces a bright flash and a loud noise so as to stun or disorient people without causing serious injury; a stun grenade.
Ryan and his gang were going to be mates forever.
Living their lives in the same cycle as everyone else in a little town 20 miles from anywhere important.
Living for the next night out. Living for the weekend.
Getting into and out of trouble. Work. Pub. Sleep. Repeat.
Ryan and his gang have seen it all, done it all, lived it all. The nights they wished they could remember and the mornings after they’d rather forget.
Ryan and his gang were going to be mates forever.
But then came the night when everything changed.
Proforça Theatre Company returns with a brand new run of “Flashbang” - an exuberant, explosive and gut-punching rollercoaster ride through the ties that bind five best mates together and what happens to those friends when that world is blown apart.
Flashbang is written by James Lewis and Directed by David Brady and brought to you by the critically-acclaimed team that brought you “At Last” [2019]. “Feel” [2018 / 19] and the Offie-Nominated "Lately" [2022]
PRAISE FOR FLASHBANG
★★★★★ - ““...a piece of such raw, masculine, emotional piece of theatre...Proforca delivered a fun, real love song dedicated to the modern British male & the concept of bromance..It's an absolute stunner of fringe productions in 2022 for me!"” - West End Evenings
★★★★★ - “James Lewis’s luminous script is an affable, affectionate ode to lad hood & the working class” - Lost in Theatre-land
★★★★★ - “Proforca has taken the beauty of normality and shone an unlikely spotlight on it. It is poetry, pain, pleasure & a pure joy to behold" - MyTheatreMates
Five
12 - 16 May
A true-crime podcaster walks into a prison to interview a serial killer. He expects a story. He doesn't expect to become part of one.
Five is a psychological thriller about obsession, control, and the seductive pull of darkness. Over a series of recorded interviews, the charming and unsettling Killer draws podcast host Morris deeper into his world - probing his relationship, his insecurities, his hungers. What begins as research curdles into fascination, and fascination into something far more dangerous.
As the interviews continue, the power dynamic shifts. Morris starts to unravel. And the audience, watching from inches away, becomes complicit in what unfolds.
This is a play about the stories we tell ourselves - about monsters, about love, about who we really are when no one's watching. It asks what happens when you stare into the abyss and the abyss offers you a seat.
Five is a taut, darkly funny two-hander that explores the blurred lines between true crime entertainment and voyeurism, between intimacy and control, between fascination and destruction.
DOMINUS
26 - 30 May
D, a black dominatrix 6 months into her tenure, is doing fine. She’s doing really great, actually. She wants to share juicy details from her exciting job and look dynamite in a leather catsuit for you, so come and join her for an evening of only that, and no pesky introspection or emotional hallelujahs or white boyfriends or religious parents or constantly ringing phones or psychological terror, because those things are for people with issues, and D is doing fine. Everything’s fine. Honest!
Written and performed by Cat Gannon (The War Between The Land And The Sea, Gilgamesh, Enkidu & Ishtar) in collaboration with Moi Ko (pornsick, Did the Sun want Me (Or did I just Misunderstand?), The Home Project @ Theatre Deli), DOMINUS fuses cabaret with expressionism to explore how unexamined trauma festers in the body and where we draw the line between sex work as therapy or exploitation for black women.
DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS CONVERSATION
2 - 6 June
Nneka is a resident doctor finishing a late shift—another unrelenting and dangerously understaffed work day. Typical. Just as she is about to leave, she is suddenly asked to lead a Do Not Attempt Resuscitation (DNAR) conversation with the relative of a patient she has never met, and about a patient she doesn't know, all under intense time pressure.
Set entirely within this single encounter, the play exposes the emotional dissonance, absurdity, and dark humour of end-of-life decision-making in a healthcare system stretched to breaking point.
As healthcare services continue to operate under relentless strain, life-altering conversations are increasingly delivered in rushed, imperfect circumstances by exhausted clinicians. This play invites the audience to sit inside one such moment as a fly on the wall, witnessing the collision of grief, bureaucracy, compassion, and detachment—and asking what it really means to remain humane within an inhumane system.
KICKOFF
12 - 14 June
‘I think to myself – yes, we are real – we have been on a pitch for the last two hours – running and sweating and shouting and I am human and alive and there is life in me. I always feel alive on the walk home from practice. And I feel alive on the pitch. I feel alive when I am next to Erin.’
As the football season comes to a close at Bristol University, follow the girls as they gear up for their final few matches as a team. With the pressure of graduation upon their heads, things heat up in the changing room as they navigate competition, ambition, feuds, crushes, best friends, injuries and the thought of life beyond team sports. If you’ve ever been part of a team or know what it’s like to exist in an environment driven by passion and dedication - then this one’s for you!
Welcome to the unfiltered, unapologetic, crass, kind, confrontational, empathetic, embarrassing world of KICKOFF.
The Bread You Throw
30 June - 4 July
Emma is a newly qualified teacher, or at least, she thinks she is. Emma is stuck in an endless loop, reliving the same events over and over, but this isn't time-travel or sci-fi, this is frontotemporal dementia. Join Emma on her journey, a journey that will challenge the narratives around the lived experience of dementia.
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