Wonderland

Hampstead Theatre
12 July

Down pit you're dark as death

and hot as hell, sweltering, swearing
in relentless pitch,
 

up to your waist in water,

rubble, grit, coal in your eyes

and lungs, coal in your shit.

 

You hold the picket line

against all odds, fighting for what

you know to be man’s right;

 

brought to your knees for scraps
you rage and weep, as all 

you ever worked for slips from sight.

Wonderland runs at Hampstead Theatre until 26 July
http://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2014/wonderland/
 

Shakespeare in Love

Noel Coward Theatre

10 July

Playwright of the river,

drinking with whores

and mongrels

in a backstreet tavern;

Poet of Cheapside,

pressing love

onto a page

with a sigh of ink.

For all your words

was there a girl

who would have been a boy

to tread the boards with you,

a girl whose heart you met

like twin souls on the stage,

before she was 

forever wrenched away?

Shakespeare in Love runs 
at the Noel Coward Theatre 

until 25 October 2014

http://shakespeareinlove.com/

The Kindness of Strangers

Southwark Playhouse
4 July

2 am, the roads are quiet now
but for the drunks
in yellow moons of light
on corners,
and a tawny coated fox,
light-pawed on the pavement,
padding home.
We cruise the slick black roads,
headlights on windows,
waiting. Tea, chat, radio.
Waiting in silence
for the bells, blue lights
and speeding, stretchers, doorbells
and a woman scared, a child
crying on the stairs,
clutching the dog,
afraid to look
at breath, blood, sick. We know.
Hold hands, lift him into the van
and drive him back through thin,
fine-falling rain.
Dawn on the river.
Back to the hospital. Out again.


The Kindness of Strangers by Curious Directive 
runs at the Southwark Playhouse until 16 July

http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/index.php/outandabout/the-kindness-of-strangers/