Press Release: New pub theatre space brings Broadway award-winning Thief to Glasgow
Broadway and Brighton Fringe award-winning play opens new venue with Lee Fanning as Sailor
Líam Rudden Media Press Release - For Immediate Release
BROADWAY AWARD WINNING PLAY TO OPEN GLASGOW’S NEWEST PUB THEATRE SPACE
Pic: Greg Macvean Design: Grant Paterson
Hard-hitting play Thief, by Líam Rudden, opens Glasgow’s 1051 GWR’s new theatre space for three intimate boutique performances.
Sailor thrives in the bars, dives and doss-houses of squalid ports. Look, you will see him. Sailor lives for robbery, imprisonment and expulsion. Be his victim. Sailor's 'virtues' are simple: rent, theft, and betrayal. Join him.
Following its award-winning premiere at the Brighton Fringe in 2014, where it won Best Theatrical Performance Award, and an award-winning appearance on New York’s Broadway, Thief gets its Glasgow premiere in the city’s newest pub theatre.
Thief, a play inspired by the vagabond playwright Jean Genet, is a dark, challenging, and not for the easily offended.
Written and directed by Liam Rudden, this first post-pandemic production of Thief sees acclaimed actor Lee Fanning (Neds, Contagion, Under The Skin, The Angel’s Share) return to the role of Sailor.
"Sensational... Ferocious... Acted with great intensity. A memorable hour of theatre." - Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman
Pic: Bill Mackellar - Lee Fanning as Sailor
AS THE AWARD-WINNING PLAY, THIEF, RETURNS, JUST WHO IS SAILOR?
“Thief is a study of abuse. A exploration of how society creates its own monsters and then hides from its complicity,” says writer and director Líam Rudden.
“It also challenges the audiences to think about the transience of beauty. It's an emotional roller-coaster that will make you laugh, cry, and look away, as Sailor tells his all-too-human story. It's about one man’s humanity.
“I wanted to get inside the head of a character that people will have preconceptions about... and to then twist those preconceptions, allowing Sailor into their heads. His world is a wonderfully dark place, where there are no rules. I like working in the landscape.”
Pic: Bill Mackellar - Lee Fanning as Sailor
"Thief is something else, dark, disturbing and sometimes hard to watch. See!" - Glenn Chandler, creator of Taggart
Liam Rudden continues, "Thief was not an easy play to write, nor is it necessarily easy to watch. Thief is the story of Sailor, a victim who refuses to see himself as that, a man who fights back. Sailor has been abused all his life. At 36 , he is now in control of the circumstances that created the 'monster' he has become. At least, that's what he believes.
"Sailor is a man struggling to maintain his humanity and self-respect, while doing what it takes to survive the brutal underworld of civilised society.
“His ethos of subverting accepted moral behaviour and self-expression is drawn loosely from the works and life of Jean Genet.
"Set in a timeless world of dockside taverns and the cobbled shadow-lands of foggy ports, the story charts one man's survival. A squalid survival some find themselves embracing even now, as much as society would like to deny that is the case.
"Importantly, however, Thief has no message. It's there to provoke thought and discussion and hopefully, entertain, albeit on an extremely dark level.”
NOTES TO EDITORS: PERFORMANCES AND TICKETS
Venue: 1051 GWR, 1051, Great Western Road, G12 0XP | Dates: 16-18 November, 8pm | Tickets : £15 Box Office : www.citizenticket.com
Pic: Bill Mackellar - Lee Fanning as Sailor
For press information and interview requests please email: liamruddenmedi@gmail.com
Other press and audience reaction so far:
"Tantalisingly layered, cloaked in the dreamy mingling of pain, sex, beauty and desire." - Broadway Baby
"Thief makes its wayward progress towards what should, if there’s any justice, be a sold-out run during this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe" - All Edinburgh Theatre
"This is the real deal. A no holds barred piece of theatre, not for the faint of heart." - Edinburgh Guide
"Well written and beautifully performed by a Scottish Genet sailor, and enough nudity to cheer up the darkest wet stormy night." - Kinny Gardner, Principal Guest Artist of the Lindsay Kemp Company
★★★★★ Black Diamond FM ★★★★★ Boyz ★★★★★ Brighton Argus ★★★★★ (Outstanding) Fringe Review ★★★★★ Modern Brickabrack ★★★★ 1/2 Public Reviews ★★★★ Broadway Baby ★★★★ Fringe Guru ★★★★ Edinburgh Guide ★★★★ All Edinburgh Theatre
"Believe the hype! Great drama has the power to inform, move, and make shifts in consciousness... Thief has all this in bucket loads." - Sarah Agnew, Brighton Argus
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