Up In Arms, in association with Pleasance and Ellie Keel, today announce the full cast for the world première of Annie Jenkins’ In Lipstick. Alice Hamilton directs James Doherty (Dennis), Caroline Faber (Maud), and Alice Sykes (Cynthia). This marks the first collaboration of James Doherty and Alice Hamilton since their acclaimed multi-award-nominated work on Barney Norris’ Eventide. In Lipstick opens at Pleasance, Islington on 11 January, with previews from 9 January, and runs until 26 January.
Things don’t change no matter how much you want them to. You try, you run away, you make things new but they’re not. Same old shit covered in lipstick.
Maud, a woman on the run from her damaged past; and Cynthia, a woman hibernating from the wilderness of the modern world. Cynthia loves Maud, and Maud loves Cynthia but now she’s beginning to suffocate. After an encounter with Dennis, a security guard at her office, she wonders if she has finally glimpsed an escape.
While Cynthia hides among YouTube videos of Shirley Bassey, a dressing up box and the McDonald’s saver menu, Maud is preparing for the greatest performance of her life. It is only a matter of time before reality shatter their cocoon of lipstick and fairy tales.
Annie Jenkins’ savage, funny, deeply loving debut gives a heartfelt voice to the fractured life of the modern city. A play about sex, lies, damage, and the ceilings on our dreams from a writer who shows us both how powerful and how powerless it feels to be young, and trying to dream a future into being.
In Lipstick is at The Pleasance 9th to 26th January 2019.
