This Technicolor Play

Presented by Not Quite Theatre Co. for Lambeth Fringe

Created and performed Alex Ansdell, Lauren Lucy Cook, Dean Elliott, Emily Foxton, Ellie McCoy , Tom Neo and Kim Whatmore

Conceived and Directed by John Kurzynowski

Producing Ensemble member by Libby Symons

Sound design by Alex Ansdell and John Kurzynowski

Lighting Design by Valentin Burwell

Assistant Director: Kim Whatmore

With thanks to Central Film School

By interrogating the impact of the melodramatic and flamboyant style of Douglas Sirk's 1950s Technicolor cinema on contemporary artistic practices, an ensemble of secondary stock characters — the Gossiping Busybody Neighbour, the Local Prominent Businessman, the Stern Moustachioed Police Chief, the Familiar Unassuming Milkman ... and Uncle Bernie — ultimately find themselves searching for sincerity amidst the haze of the outdated social norms that permeate their shared liminal space, all while activating the overly saturated Technicolor tropes of Sirkian filmmaking. What they uncover is the dark underbelly of melodrama — the ugly truth hidden beneath the idyllic facade of the postwar American home. This postdramatic fever dream seeks to expose this underbelly and transpose the lurid worlds of Sirkian cinema to the stage.