The multi-award-winning young theatrical trio – behind work such as 2008’s surprise Edinburgh smash hit Auditorium, and the acclaimed Later Showers – are running their flagship production Play On Words, and curating The Reactivity Season, a new festival of interactive theatre, at the subversive central London theatre. In the past two weeks, the company have received great press for Play On Words (winner of the Cameron Mackintosh Award for New Writing and the Buxton Fringe Special 30th Anniversary Award).

The Times described the play as “an ingenious little box of tricks from precocious theatre innovators Three’s Company”, and “a metatheatrical game of dramatic forensics… both smart and funny”. The Stage agree, praising the “clearly inventive company…”, the “anarchic tone, intriguingly breaking down established boundaries” and the “terrifying but impressive tirade”. TimeOut reviewed the piece as “linguistic and conceptual pyrotechnics… light-footed [and] adept at scrambling the act of theatre”, adding that “Crawshaw’s script telegraphs its own artifice with twisty verbal gags and neat symmetries.”

The blogs agree, with strong reviews on AllTheFestivals.com, FringeGuru, Remote Goat and the London Theatre Blog. In summary, “this is short, sharp… just about the perfect format” (The Stage). The bumper final weekend includes the conclusion of their Symposium on Interactive Theatre, with a huge panel of renowned names, including theatre critics Ian Shuttleworth and Roger Foss, the RSC’s Steve Marmion, Esther Smith from The Royal Court’s The Author and BBC’s Material Girl, Stuart Nolan from Hex Induction, plus a variety of artists from companies such as Non Zero One and Three’s Company themselves.

Running alongside the Symposium on Saturday 23rd January are a host of interactive artworks, included in the ticket price. These include Bineural Performance, a one-robot play; The Story Exchange trading books for tales from the audience; Dan Somerville’s beautiful and stirring interactive dance First Piano Concerto; and National Arts Services’ In The Dark, and Three’s Company’s own A Live Transmission of ‘Adventure Time’. Three’s Company are also garnering an extra-ordinary response – during and after the show – for their riotous interactive comedy series A Live Transmission of ‘Adventure Time’.

The thirty minute episodes, performed after Play On Words on certain evenings, follow the hapless Comedy Trio as they try to broadcast episodes of their spoof radio series live. Rebellious technology, jealous DJs, unreliable guest stars and a run of ludicrously bad luck leave the trio calling on the audience for more than just the traditional laugh track… With so many events, plus staged readings and guest performances, the final week of Three’s Company’s residency promises to be the biggest yet. If you’ve not been down, don’t miss your last opportunity to catch this emerging and intriguing company in action.

For Press Tickets and information, please contact: Natalie Eskinazi | 07870 840 166 | natalie@threescompany.co.uk

Images and Editors’ Notes at www.play-on-words.net/press

Listings information

Three’s Company present PLAY ON WORDS Venue Tristan Bates Theatre | 1a Tower Street, London WC2H 9NP Dates 4 – 23 January 2010 | press night Tuesday 5 Jan Time 7:30pm (Sundays 4pm) | approx 1hr 05mim Tickets £12.00 | concs £10.00 Box Office 020 7240 6283 | www.tristanbatesthreatre.co.uk

A LIVE TRANSMISSION OF ‘ADVENTURE TIME’ Venue Tristan Bates Theatre | 1a Tower Street, London WC2H 9NP Dates 8, 9, 13, 15, 16, 20, 22 & 23 January 2010 Time 9pm | approx 30mim Tickets £5 Box Office 020 7240 6283 | www.tristanbatesthreatre.co.uk

THE INTERACTIVITY SYMPOSIUM and THE INTERPLAY SESSION Venue Tristan Bates Theatre | 1a Tower Street, London WC2H 9NP Dates 9, 16, & 23 January 2010 Time 1.30pm – 9.30pm (with breaks) Tickets £10 Box Office 020 7240 6283 | www.tristanbatesthreatre.co.uk

This clip features Susanna Fiore and myself in my favourite scene from the play (mainly because I get to act like the office jackass):

This is a great scene between two fantastic actors: Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Flintham and Benjamin Peters. Lottie’s character (George) is the office new girl, trying to get on in journalism. Ben’s character (James) is the editor of the newspaper and wants the new girl to ‘keep an eye’ on her colleagues for him…

On Saturday 19th September, Upstart Theatre are returning to the Tristan Bates Theatre as part of Midnight Matinee with a labyrinthine installation piece devised by Tom Mansfield, Laura Casey, Kate McGregor and Dan Usztan. Come along and get lost in the maze…

They’d love to find out things you’ve lost – let them know here.

Doors open at 11.55 pm on Saturday 19th September; tickets £5 on the door.

This was a great night that I was a part of last time around. Go along and see it! Plus, it’s always interesting to go to the theatre at midnight!

Here’s what happened last time:

And here’s a fun clip from Trafalgar Square very late (or very early) after the last Midnight Matinee:

And later still…

John wanted a big American movie-style intro to the show, to juxtapose with the low-key opening of the show (for maximum comic effect!) so we wrote a show and recorded it at Resonance FM’s studios.

I should tell you what the show is. It’s called Pifftacular and stars John as Piff The Magic Dragon – a wonderfully grumpy and very magical dragon who likes card magic and kidnapping princesses.

Check out Piff’s site for more info and go and see the show to hear my dulcet tones as a brash American voiceover guy (and enjoy some great magic and princess kidnapping).

It’s produced by Marion Drew for an online publication called Extra Extra, hence the title of this post. I mention it as Marion very kindly mentions the cast by name including me.

You can read the full review here.

The Sauce is a very good blog by journalist Brendan Montague who was kind enough to watch the show twice and take part in the two post-show discussions that we held to expand on the issues of the play Oh Well Never Mind Bye by Steven Lally.

Brendan is a former employee of a couple of Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers so he is one of the best placed people we spoke to for comment on the veracity of the play and the situations the journalists find themselves in. Brendan was very complimentary about the show and even said to me at one point:

‘I can introduce you to the guy you’re playing if you like!’

From my point of view (and that of the writer Steven Lally) this was a great compliment as it shows just how real and well-researched Steve’s writing is. The fact that my character (Fin Ashmore) exists out there in the world of journalism is both great from a creative point of view and sad from the point of view of right thinking journalists who are not content to spew out quotes and information taken directly from the news wire without questioning its authority.

In any case, you can read the review that Brendan wrote for The Sauce by clicking here.

The image on the left is taken from Time Out London (June 25th – July 1st 2009) and features a photo of yours truly along with a glowing recommendation from their reviewer Andrew. To view the image full size and to zoom in on it, simply click the image.

Andrew also wrote a lovely review of the show which you can read by clicking here.

‘independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel’s 40-year occupation of Palestinian territories.’

You can read the full review here. Interesting stuff, bearing in mind the story of the play.

Over the past few months I’ve been doing a fair bit of work on Resonance FM, both with my own radio show (entitled Smoke & Mirrors) and as a guest on other shows.

Most recently, Upstart Theatre – the company behind ‘Oh Well Never Mind Bye’  – and I put together a radio show all about the play we’re currently doing which runs until 4th July 2009 at The Union Theatre.

The result is the first episode of The Matthew Duggan Podcast, an occasional podcast hosted by me. In this episode, I chat with writer Steven Lally, director Tom Mansfield and assistant director Laura Casey about the themes of the play, the creative process and the genesis of the play and the events of July 2005.

Here you can listen to the first episode and all the episodes will also be featured on iTunes. Just type in ‘Matthew Duggan’ into the iTunes Store and look under podcasts.

Enjoy the show and why not leave a comment below or on iTunes if you enjoy it?

You can read the review here

To that end, our lovely press ladies got us into a number of publications including the London Lite, a free newspaper which runs listings for upcoming shows.

Write a review of Oh Well Never Mind Bye

I’ll update the blog shortly about Press Night and the joys of sitting opposite Michael Billington from The Guardian while he reviewed the show we’re were performing.

If you phone the Union Theatre Box Office on 0207 261 9876 and quote ‘Friends Offer’, you can get two tickets for the price of one.

The show starts at 7:30pm and the theatre is at 204 Union Street, London, SE1 0LX.

See you there!

For all the info – in a lovely spangly poster – click here.

Press Night is on 18th June and there’s a gala night on 20th June.

Hope to see you there.

You can tune in to Resonance on Thursday either online at ResonanceFM.com or on 104.4FM within the London area.

To find out more about the play itself, as well as details of the cast and crew, check out www.upstart-theatre.co.uk

It’s a project that we started work on around 4 years ago, shortly after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell underground station in London. Jean Charles was shot as a result of a series of intelligence blunders by The Metropolitan Police following the London bombings of 7th July and the failed bombings of 22nd July. As a result of this, the Upstart project was originally called The 22nd July Project. We began by doing workshops on the ideas that the shooting brought to light, but slowly Tom and Steven realised that the wider issues of how the situation was reported were as crucial (if not, more so) than the direct effects of the shooting itself.

As a result, the idea for Oh Well Never Mind Bye came about. Shortly afterwards, the script was written by Steven and has just finished the casting process, using two new actors to the project and two (myself and the excellent Susanna Fiore) who have been in it since the events the play is based on occured. We start rehearsing next week for two weeks, then it’s on to a three week run at The Union Theatre in Southwark, south London.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll post info from rehearsals and news about the play itself. So, watch this space…

As you can see, the site is currently under construction so please drop by again soon to see the finished version.

In the meantime, if you do need to get in touch, you can e-mail Matthew at matt@matthewduggan.co.uk.