An imaginative show following a family of circus artists who flee the Communist regime in Romania during the 1960s, comes to London this week.
A bridge between reality and fiction, Edith Alibec’s multi award-winning adaptation of Aglaja Veteranyi’s autobiographical book, Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta, comes to The Gate Theatre in Notting Hill.
Amongst the caravans and the circus tents, a family are caught between two worlds: the colorful, transfiguring high-top where the mother performs her death-defying stunts and the harsher reality of a nomadic life, where home is only to be found in your mother’s cooking.
Told from the perspective of the youngest child, this lyrical darkly comic tale is the story of a family always on the road and always the foreigners.
Alibec witnessed first-hand the refugee crisis in Germany as she met with refuges and visited their social camps. Her adaptation seeks to highlight the vulnerability in being forced to leave home and trying to find a new place in the world. It explores what it is to feel foreign and isolated and how it feels when the place you live does not let you feel like you belong.
When: 1st – 4th May 2019
Where: The Gate Theatre, 11 Pembridge Road, Notting Hill, London W11 3HQ
£: Tickets cost £24, or £18 for concessions and £12 for under 26 year olds
More info: www.gatetheatre.co.uk