Tiny Dynamite, by award-winning playwright and screenwriter Abi Morgan, returns to London for its first professional revival in 15 years. This play, one of her early works, explores how tiny events from our pasts can have explosive effects on our futures.
Tiny Dynamite follows the story of two childhood friends, eternally bound by a traumatic event from their pasts, that has left them incapable of moving on with their lives. But during their annual pilgrimage to the countryside, the pair encounter a beautiful stranger who couldn’t possibly exist, someone who threatens to uncover a truth long since buried.
Morgan described Tiny Dynamite as about ‘knowing when to take responsibility for your life and those moments when you have to just step back and let a miracle happen.’ Pertinently, taking personal responsibility for our actions is making daily headline news. The play asks whether we can truly shed the experiences, memories and people that ultimately shape who we are – or whether we all, eventually, have to face a personal and collective truth.
The production merges qualities of a love story with those of a ghost tale and psychological thriller, presenting a fierce pressure cooker of memory and trauma which Morgan described as formally being akin to ‘a domino effect’, with the tension constantly building throughout.
Director David Loumgair comments, I’m absolutely thrilled that we’re bringing Tiny Dynamite to the stage, since Abi’s plays are so rarely produced here. It’s also a huge honour, if not a little daunting, to be directing it after Vicky Featherstone’s, original production in 2001. The play speaks to the ways trauma impacts on our lives and shapes the people we become, how it binds us to others through collective experience whether we like it or not. I think Tiny Dynamite explores the bravery it takes to confront these experiences, asking how can we heal and move forward with our lives, not just on our own, but together.
Since writing Tiny Dynamite, Morgan has written critically-acclaimed screen-plays including Shame, starring Michael Fassbender and directed by Steve McQueen, The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep and directed by Phyllida Lloyd and Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan and directed by Sarah Gavron.
