I think life can be basically divided into two things: suspense and surprise. I prefer surprise to suspense. But that’s basically because I feel suspense all the time.
A summer of love. A fight. A car chase. A siege. When Katie’s boyfriend is attacked on the streets of Luton, she is propelled outside her borders to the frontier of council estates and concrete jungles. Amidst the sweltering heat, the baying for blood and longing for love, Katie is forced to decide her future.
A vital tale for our times by multi-award winning playwright Jack Thorne, Bunny is an interrogation into the mind of one young girl struggling to find her place within a modern world lacking intimacy and connection. This compelling and thought-provoking show explores a powerful youth voice in Britain.
Bunny is a play with a young white woman at its centre – one who loses her underwear in a car on the outskirts of an estate to a bloke she knows nothing about. She doesn’t understand that she needs to escape, that she’s been sucked in. Now, more than ever, theatre needs to explore stories where women are made to feel powerless, inadequate and submissive. Now, more than ever, theatre needs to explore stories that help us to identify with the state of our nation.
Catherine Lamb, Lucy Curtis and Sophia Nicholson are a trio of up-and-coming female theatre makers seeking to present an unflinching, honest, intimate, vibrant and relatable story of our times. It is a compelling insight into what it is to be growing up today and the inevitable struggles, pressures and pitfalls of vulnerable young people.
Lucy Curtis comments: Bunny is about the state of our nation now – we are faced with youth unemployment, problematic political campaigns, factory closures and racial tensions in our communities. We are seeing the re-emergence of 20th century mentalities that, it turns out, were never completely left behind. They have stayed with us, and festered, and have now erupted across Britain, America and the rest of world. We see this through the eyes of Katie: a white, middle-class eighteen year old who wants to be anything but white, middle-class and eighteen. Bunny is about dialogue and about the understanding that can be reached between different people – through empathy.
Just three stops from Leicester Square, The White Bear Theatre now boasts enhanced technical facilities and playing space with the added benefit of a stylish bar and restaurant offering pre and post show food.
BUNNY plays at the White Bear Theatre 7 – 25 March 2017
Photo: Romana Patton
