The Pride comes to Munich

Opening night at the BeMe theatre for the young and talented British cast directed by Tom Daley.

Marcel Bruneau, Graham Dickson, Meren Vanholk and Tom McDonald brought on stage yesterday night The Pride, the first play of the awarded British playwriter Alexi Kaye Campbell.

The Pride features a torrid, trans-generational love triangle. Alternating between 1958 and 2008, and featuring the same three people, forever thirty-something, living similar but radically different lives, The Pride examines changing attitudes to sexuality over a period of 50 years, it explores the whole notion of inheritance and what one generation inherits from a previous one.

It starts in 1958 with Philip, a strait-laced estate agent, and his wife, Sylvia, entertaining a young novelist, Oliver. There is a palpable tension which results in a guilt-ridden affair between the men. Scenes from the 1950s alternate, however, with those from 2008. The Oliver of today is a smart, sex-addicted journalist temporarily deserted by his lover Philip, and nursed through his periodic crises by the ever-loyal Sylvia.

The actors are on stage for the entire play. Change of costumes take place in front of the audience and the characters sit in the corners when they are not in scene; lack of space? No, it is a consistent decision of the director Tom Daley. "The entire play has this ghostly feeling to it; the modern Sylvia, Philip and Oliver are hunted by the past, their 50s alteregos are hinted by the future. Their lives alternate and intersect for the entire time of the play".

Dutch-born Meren Vanholk (Sylvia) describes as astounding the response of the audience, which acclaimed the company and the choice of artistic director Elisa Moolecherry demanding the actors on stage several time after the play.

The Pride, 3.-21. May 2011 Be Me Theatre. Munich

http://www.bemetheatre.com/prod_thepride.html