Letters to Windsor House in Norwich

Fringe First award winning smash hit coming to Norwich Arts Centre as part of an extensive UK tour

Letters to Windsor House (no, not that one) is the latest show from multi award winning duo Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole. The Fringe First winning/Total Theatre award nominated show takes a typically idiosyncratic, personal and very human look at the housing crisis in the UK and succeeds in making a song and dance about the state of the nation and ‘generation rent’.

Norfolk audiences have the opportunity to see this smash hit when it performs at Norwich Arts Centre on 27 April as part of an extensive tour that follows a sold out two week London run at the Soho Theatre.

Combining a highly entertaining blend of comedy, theatre, song, performance art and investigative journalism with dancing red cardboard post boxes, Letters to Windsor is a totally fun show, that nevertheless makes important points about the nation’s housing crisis, the desperation and inequalities it creates and above all the utter unfairness of it all. The housing crisis gets personal in the multi-award winning company’s new show for ‘Generation Rent’ featuring music, song, politics, dodgy landlords and detective work. Rebecca and Louise created the show about their own housing issues in the London rental sector but the show is relevant to anyone who has ever rented a property anywhere.

‘A painfully funny look at the housing crisis…. A kind of twenty-first-century Withnail & I’ ★★★★ Time Out – Top 10 UK Theatre Shows of 2016

Letters to Windsor House is a brilliantly fun piece of investigative social theatre that manages to make a song and dance about the crisis facing the rental sector throughout the country due to the shortage of affordable homes. Sitting in their rented council flat in Windsor House, east London, staring at a growing pile of unopened letters to previous tenants, Sh!t Theatre’s Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit became curious about the history of the flat and its previous occupants.

A loophole in the Postal Services Act says you can open other people’s mail … under certain circumstances. Rebecca and Louise decided that this was that certain circumstance and giving in to temptation opened the Pandora’s box…

‘hilarious and heartbreaking’ ★★★★ Sunday Times

Their detective work revealed a legacy of dodgy landlords, a frightening case study of how compound interest on minor unpaid charges can become thousands of pounds of debt and a revelation about their own tenancy status that ultimately affected their friendship. This being an inner London Borough, gentrification is never far away. A smooth estate agent shows Louise and Rebecca around a new build show flat aimed at buy to let investors, assuring them that residents of this new world are more than adequately protected from the tenants of Windsor House…

‘A distinctive style of music-hall agitprop theatre imbued with wit and heart’ ★★★★ The Times

Rebecca Biscuit said ’we’ve lived and worked together in Windsor House for five years, watching as London and our friendship changed’. Louise added ‘as soon as we started opening the mail that had been tumbling through our door, making guesses at the stories of the various tenants, we knew we had to take the investigation as far as we could’.

Letters To Windsor House was a huge sell out hit at the Edinburgh Fringe winning a coveted Fringe First Award to add to their Total Theatre Award, Arches Brick Award and Three Weeks Editors Award along with their nominations for the Amnesty Freedom of Expression and Carol Tambor Awards and a further Total Theatre nomination.

Sh!t Theatre have built an impressive body of work including Guinea Pigs on Trial and Women’s Hour (top 5 best plays to see in Edinburgh – Daily Telegraph). They have been told many times by theatre professionals to change their name. www.shittheatre.co.uk

See a short trailer here:

Letters to Windsor House was commissioned by Harlow Playhouse and Supported by Camden People’s Theatre. It is produced by Show And Tell www.showandtelluk.com

Critical acclaim for Sh!t Theatre:
★★★★★ Three Weeks, Edinburgh Festivals Magazine, Scotsgay
★★★★ Guardian, Times, Time Out, Scotsman, Daily Telegraph, The List, WhatsOnStage, Exeunt, The Stage

Norwich listings info:
Letters to Windsor House – Sh!t Theatre
The housing crisis gets personal in the multi-award winning company’s new show for ‘Generation Rent’ featuring music, song, politics, dodgy landlords and detective work.
‘Pertinent social theatre’ ★★★★ Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
‘Clever, hilarious and thoughtful’ ★★★★ Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman

27 April 8pm 

Norwich Arts Centre, St Benedicts Street Norwich NR2 4PG 

Pay what you can, 01603 660352 www.norwichartscentre.co.uk

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