A Warwickshire Testimony

The past: the 'big house', the servant class, the close-knit family ties of a bygone generation. Rural idyll or claustrophobic hellhole? Desperate to get away from her family and from a culture where everybody knows everything about everybody, Edie moves out but can she ever manage to move on? The present: big business and incomers, no shops and no locals, where nothing stays the same for five minutes and where the 'quaintness' of the cottages is all that's left of village life. For better or for worse? April de Angelis's funny and compassionate new play powerfully illustrates a rapidly changing way of life by focusing on the loves, traumas and disputes of one Midlands family throughout the twentieth century.

April De Angelis's plays include Kerry Jackson (National Theatre), My Brilliant Friend (adapted from Elena Ferrante's novels for Rose Theatre, Kingston, and NT), House Party (BBC4 and Headlong Theatre), Gin Craze!, a musical with Lucy Rivers (Royal & Derngate), Extinct (Stratford East), Rune (New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme), The Village (Stratford East), Wild East (Royal Court), A Laughing Matter (Out of Joint/NT/tour), The Warwickshire Testimony (RSC), The Positive Hour (Out of Joint/Hampstead/Old Vic; Sphinx), Headstrong (NT Shell Connections), Playhouse Creatures (Sphinx Theatre Company), Hush (Royal Court), Soft Vengeance (Graeae Theatre Company), The Life and Times of Fanny Hill (adapted from the James Cleland novel), Ironmistress (ReSisters Theatre Company), Wuthering Heights (adapted from Emily Brontë's novel for Birmingham Rep), Jumpy (Royal Court and Duke of York's Theatres), Gastronauts (Royal Court), and After Electra (Theatre Royal, Plymouth). Her work for radio includes Visitants,The Outlander, which won the Writers' Guild Award 1992, Cash Cows for the Woman's Hour serial (all BBC), and adaptations of Jane Austen's Emma, Grace Metalious's Peyton Place and Stratis Myrivilis's Life in the Tomb. For opera: Flight with composer Jonathan Dove (Glyndebourne), and the libretto for Silent Twins (Almeida).