Guardians

GUARDIANS by Peter Morris

"Gripping... utterly convincing... an exquisitely surreal tale" - Evening Standard, Aug '05

The indelible images of war: atrocities in Abu Ghraib prison, provocative forgeries in a British newspaper.

Critically acclaimed playwright Peter Morris – THE AGE OF CONSENT (“Dread-filled, funny, perceptive... a stunning evening”, The Independent), Marge (5 stars, The Scotsman) – dares to imagine the truth behind the images that shocked the world.

Commissioned by MahWaff. Premiered as part of MahWaff's Edinburgh doublebill with ANGRY YOUNG MAN by Ben Woolf. Previews at The Linbury Studio (LAMDA). Transferred to Theatre503 ('Britain's most important theatre' - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian). Played off-Broadway (The Culture Project) in April 2006.

A MahWaff world premiere produced by Katrin Macmillan

CAST

MyAnna Buring
Hywel John

Directed by Mike Longhurst

Peter Morris Biography :

Peter Morris
Peter has twice won the London Sunday Times Playwriting Prize, in 2000 and 2001.

His work has been staged professionally at the Bush; the Gate; the Latchmere and the Union Theatres in London, and in New York at Soho Rep; the Belt; HERE and Dixon Place.

Peter’s controversial plays include The Age of Consent, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe 2001, then transferred to London’s Bush Theatre in 2002. The play has since been staged professionally in Dublin, Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo, and as a television play in Reykjavik.


Readings and workshops in the UK include the Old Vic, the King’s Head, and the Arts Theatre in London.

Peter has also written for BBC1 (Born and Bred), BBC2 (adapting John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure) Film Four (adapting Paul Murray’s novel An Evening of Long Goodbyes), and for film director Robert Altman (BBC Films), a 6-part adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected.

Reviews for Peter Morris' The Age of Consent:

"This 70-minute play would alone have been worth a trip to Edinburgh.... The play opens up a moral minefield.... Morris's play sends you out in a state of moral turbulence. As the Danish physicist Neils Bohr said about the theory of quantum physics, if you are not shocked by it, you have not understood it."
John Peter, The Sunday Times

"A brilliantly developed piece that begins by making you laugh and ends by making you shudder"
Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph

"Brilliantly constructed....Morris...has a sharp Orton-like ear..."
Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard

"Dread-filled, funny, and perceptive.. a stunning evening."
Rhoda Koenig, The Independent

"Drama at its most gripping....There's a sensitivity and finesse to the writing that has you hanging on every word."
Dominic Cavendish, The Daily Telegraph

"A hypnotic tautness.... nerve-pricking studies in moral numbness shaped by an all-consuming sense of futility"
Ben Brantley, The New York Times