The Here and This and Now
What makes us truly happy? Health? Family? Professional success? Blasting it in the gym? Romance? Pills?
Or are we ignoring the bigger stuff? Real life-changing stuff that will devastate the world if we just keep ignoring it?
Theatre Royal Plymouth’s production, The Here and This and Now is a spirited and surprising dark new comedy that takes a look at the pharmaceutical business, the salaryman (or woman) and the quest for happiness. The Here and This and Now previews from Thursday 9 March and runs until Saturday 25 March with press night on Monday 13 March.
Glenn Waldron’s first play, Forever House produced by Theatre Royal Plymouth, premiered in The Drum in 2013. A former Editor of i-D magazine, Glenn has written for a variety of publications including the New York Times, Vogue, W magazine, Wallpaper*, The Guardian, Another, Nylon and 10 Magazine and held various at-large positions include Contributing
Menswear Editor for The Independent, Style Director for Arena and Contributing Features Editor at Fantastic Man magazine.
Simon Stokes directs Simon Darwen (Niall), Andy Rush (Robby), Becci Gemmell (Helen) and Jessica Clarke (Gemma). Set design by Bob Bailey, lighting by Andy Purves and sound by Adrienne Quartly.
Simon Darwen’s theatre credit’s include Our Country's Good (Out of Joint/Toronto/Tour), Lizzie Siddal (Arcola), Catch 22 (Northern Stage/Birmingham
Rep/National Tour), Virgin (Watford Palace), King Lear (Theatre Royal Bath), Mad About The Boy (Young Vic), Love Love Love (Paines Plough/Drum Theatre /National Tour), Unrestless (Old Vic Tunnels), Accolade (Original Revival Cast) (Finborough Theatre),Ramshackle Heart (Public Theatre New York) Arse, Shove (Theatre 503), The Merchant of Venice, The Tragedy of a Thomas Hobbes, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream (RSC), 1 in 5 (Hampstead Theatre), Fanny & Faggot (Trafalgar Studios). His television credits include Call the Midwife, Silent Witness, The Bletchley Circle and The Bill.
Andy Rush’s theatre credits include Love Lies and Taxidermy (Paines Plough/Clwyd Theatre Cymru/Sherman Cymru), Growth (Paines Plough), Tipping The Velvet (Lyric Hammersmith), Twelfth Night (The Lamb Players), Jumpers For Goalposts (Paines Plough), and The Kitchen Sink (Bush Theatre). His television credits include Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This, Casualty, Waterloo Road, and Wizards Vs Aliens; for film, ID2: Shadwell Army and Here and Now
Becci Gemmell’s theatre credits include Noises Off (Nottingham and Tour), Forever House (Plymouth Drum), Walking The Tightrope (Offstage Theatre), Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare’s Globe), Much Ado About Nothing (Manchester Royal Exchange), Taming of The Shrew (International Tour and Shakespeare’s Globe). Her television credits include Casualty, Doctors, Call the Midwife, Code of a Killer and Land Girls (Series 1-3); for film, Red Lights.
Jessica Clark’s theatre credits include Rotterdam (Trafalgar Studios/Theatre503), Skin A Cat (The Bunker/The Vault festival), two seasons of plays with Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre including Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, School for Scandal (Park Theatre), Love’s Comedy, The Burglar Who Failed/Return to Sender (Orange Tree Theatre), Respect (Birmingham Rep), Be My Baby (Derby Theatre), Wild Horses (Theatre503), Alice in Wonderland (New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth) and Fewer Emergencies (Granary Theatre, Cork). Her film, television and radio credits include Versailles (Canal+), Silent Witness, Casualty, Doctors and In Search of the Brontës (BBC), Broadside (PBS Television) and Kindness (BBC Radio 4).
Simon Stokes is Artistic Director of Theatre Royal Plymouth and most recently directed Monster Raving Loony (2016) by James Graham. He was Artistic Director at the Bush Theatre in London from the mid 1970s to the late 1980s. Thereafter he was Artistic
Associate and Director of Development for the Turnstyle Group in the West End. An international director, Simon’s work includes Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman at the Bush Theatre with Simon Callow and Mark Rylance; When I Was A Girl I Used To Scream and Shout by Sharman Macdonald, with Julie Walters, Geraldine James and Dawn French in the West End and subsequently in the USA and A Slip of the Tongue by Dusty Hughes, at the Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago and in the West End, with John Malkovich and Ingeborga Dapkunaite. In Plymouth, Simon has directed Carl Grose’s Grand Guignol and Horse Piss for Blood, The Astronaut’s Chair by Rona Munro, Nostalgia by Lucinda Coxon, Moonshine by Snoo Wilson and both The Green Man and Presence by Doug Lucie. Among an ongoing series of collaborations with Simon Callow have been Inside Wagner’s Head at the Lynbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House and Emmanuel Darley’s Tuesdays At Tesco’s in Edinburgh and New York.
Tickets are priced at £15 and can be booked online at www.theatreroyal.com or by calling the Theatre Royal Plymouth Box Office on 01752 267222. Concessions are available.
