The London Spring

 

My latest play, The London Spring, is a dark but funny vision of London in the near future. It's showing at the Etctera Theatre, the small but perfect fringe theatre above the Oxford Arms pub in Camden Town - a minute's walk from Camden Town tube station.

Dates are March 6 to March 25, and it's on at 7.30 Tuesday-Saturday and 6.30 Sunday. It lasts an hour, so you're out in time for a nice meal in one of Camden Town's fine eateries.

This is my fourth play. The Sons of Catholic Gentlemen

won the annual Independent Radio Drama Productions award and was directed for radio by Tim Crooks, with Anthony Booth playing the priest.

My second, third and fourth plays were all directed by the multi-talented Joanna Turner, who is now working with Opera North. The Right Honourable Lady was at the Hen and Chickens; Money Makes You Happy at the Bridewell; and Claim and Shame - my take on the MPs' expenses scandal - at the Theatre 503. This time I'm lucky to have the experienced and widely respected Christine Kimberley to direct.

 

The Prague Spring in 1968, the Arab Spring in 2011 – but what will it take before London has had enough? Michael, a prosperous American doctor, is in London for the first time. On Waterloo Station, a pretty girl steals his wallet, a tramp sells him a square of toilet paper for five dollars, and precious and dangerous drugs are stolen from him. Trying to get them back, he’s plunged into the darkness and despair that is London in the 2020s.

 

 

Francis Beckett is an author, journalist, playwright and contemporary historian. His latest book is What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? – How the Children of the Sixties Lived the Dream and Failed the Future (Biteback, £12.99).