Balm In Gilead
by Lanford Wilson
Directors Stuart Wood & Cameron Thorne
Composer & Sound Designer Joseff Harris
Lighting Designer Hugo Dodsworth
Production Manager Becky Vowles
Stage Manager Cheryl Curley
Costume Ruby Nex
Costume Supervisor Rhi Good
Movement Director Michelle Gaskell
Intimacy Director Lex Kaby
Dialect & Voice Rebecca Daltry
Production Electrician Thomas Pitchers
Producer Stuart Wood
“Mind your own sweetheart; you live longer…”
In a shabby, barebones, all-night café-diner, the city’s flotsam and jetsam forlornly wash in. Prostitutes, bums, dealers, addicts, dreamers, runaways, the desperate… the lost.
Amongst this meshing of the city’s underbelly, a collection of colourful characters emerge, including Joe, a cynical, ill-informed, small-time dealer in more trouble than he knows; and Darlene, a wide-eyed, naive newcomer, getting more attention than she wants.
Together, they might have a shot at escaping the circular, squalid turmoil of life at the edge, but can they do so before it engulfs them?
Originally set in 1960s Manhattan, Lanford Wilson’s groundbreaking play paints a pulsating mosaic of overlapping and interrelating speeches as characters and stories buzz and blend together around a common centre. Not only does Wilson starkly illuminate a bleak and terrifying world of young exiles and outcasts in New York’s upper Broadway area, but he simultaneously challenges our expectations of the rules and form of theatre.
Production shots © Craig Fuller