Sweat (7 Jun–21 Jul )

Sweat, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that Lynn Nottage receives its UK premiere at the Donmar Warehouse under the directorship of Lynette Linton. In 2011, Lynn Nottage began spending time with the people of Reading, Pennsylvania: officially one of the poorest cities in the USA.

During the following two years, she dug deep into the forgotten heart of Middle America, finding a city divided by racial tension and the collapse of industry.

It also tells of friends pitted against each other by big business and the decline of the American Dream. As well Sweat explores how the decline of industry and the crippling of unions goad the manufacturing class into racist and anti-immigrant positions.

It has been said that Nottage allows drama to emerge through prisms of race, gender and class. She is passionate about making the political feel deeply personal and she allows her characters to explain themselves in ways that alternately attract and repel sympathies.

Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often deals with the lives of marginalised and how disenfranchised can have a devastatingly detrimental impact on ordinary people.

She is also the She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice; the first in 2009 for Ruined, a melodrama warning society of the irreparable damage war can inflict upon women and men and the second in 2017 for Sweat.

Lynette Linton is a writer and theatre director. In September 2017, she was nominated for best director at the Stage debut awards. Her directorial work includes Assata Taught Me, 2017, Gate Theatre. Indenture, 2016, The Dark Horse festival. The Rally, 2016, Theatre Royal Stratford East.

The cast includes Martha Plimpton, who is appearing with the permission of UK Equity, incorporating the Variety Artistes’ Federation, pursuant to an exchange programme between the American Equity and UK Equity.

Sweat, 7 June, Gielgud Theatre, London W1D 6AR   https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/production/7065/sweat-at-the-gielgud-theatre/ for tickets and details.