Previews: Real theatre

Expectations

It's hard to believe that Expectations is Kristina Branden-Whitaker’s first performed play. Drawing on her own experience of raising a child with a chromosome disorder so rare it doesn’t have a name, Branden pens a wry but deeply moving debut piece. Garnering great reviews in 2009, Expectations follows the story of two couples—one English, one Swedish—as they expect the birth of their children who are diagnosed with rare conditions. From the excitement of becoming parents, to the prospect of raising severely disabled children, this play explores difficult personal relationships with tremendous sensitivity.

 

Lockerbie: Unfinished Business

On the quiet evening of 21 December 1988, Lockerbie was set ablaze when an exploded Pan Am Boeing 747 crashed down from the skies. 270 people were killed in the worst terrorist attack the UK has ever experienced. Fringe First winners Hannah Eidinow and David Benson’s show Lockerbie: Unfinished Business traces the efforts of campaigner Jim Swire—an English doctor who lost his daughter in the tragedy—to uncover the truth of the bombing. The one-man show is based on Swire’s account of his own investigation. The show comes to the Fringe a year after the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was released by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds, eliciting international outcry. But Swire is convinced that there are yet questions to be answered…

 

Of Women and Horses I Have Known

Tearing up the tight-lipped, conservative world of horse-racing—leaving a stabbed husband, a champion racehorse, empty gin bottles and a whiff of Channel No. 5 in her wake—the glamourous and depraved Jean Hislop appalled everyone she encountered. Or so the story goes. Physical theatre company Slip of Steel tells an extraordinary story in an extraordinary manner. Written and directed by Jean Hislop’s own granddaughter, acclaimed performer, writer and director, Susanna Hislop, Of Women and Horses I Have Known doesn’t just tell the story of an infamous woman, but explains how stories become stories at all.