Rockets and Blue Lights at the Royal Exchange – CANCELLED
Kristy Stott, Theatre Editor
Winner of the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award, Rockets and Blue Lights is an extraordinary new play from one of the UK’s most trailblazing playwrights, Winsome Pinnock. Launching the Spring/ Summer Season at the Royal Exchange, Pinnock’s award-winning work retells British history through the prism of the slave trade.
An extraordinary new play from Winsome Pinnock.
Seamlessly shifting through time, Rockets and Blue Lights explores Great Britain’s role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from three different perspectives. Winsome Pinnock superbly weaves together the stories of Lou, a 21st-century actress who finds herself bound by historical legacy; Thomas, a sailor longing for the sea, living in Victorian Britain, and an ageing J.M.W Turner, who yearns for artistic inspiration.
Director Miranda Cromwell makes her Royal Exchange debut with this powerful and poetic play. Kiza Deen (The Phlebotomist) will take on the role of Lou, with Karl Collins (Nine Night) as Thomas and Paul Bradley (EastEnders) as the celebrated painter JMW Turner. The play also features BAFTA and Golden Globes nominee Cathy Tyson.
This performance invites us to question how the past is presented and who has the right to tell its stories.
Juxtaposing fact with fiction, the personal with the political, and the past with the present, this performance invites us to question how the past is presented and who has the right to tell its stories.
It feels very apt that this world premiere production will be performed in the Royal Exchange, where, in the mid-1800s, it is estimated that 80% of the world trade in finished cotton took place.
