Earthquakes in London

Mike Bartlett

Mar 2014 · A&C Black

About this ebook

It's Cabaret, we've got our heads down and we're dancing and drinking as fast as we can. The enemy is on its way, but this time it doesn't have guns and gas it has storms and earthquakes, fire and brimstone.... You were the glimmer. At the end of the tunnel. And you went out.

An all-pervasive fear of the future and a guilty pleasure in the excesses of the present drive Mike Bartlett's epic rollercoaster of a play from 1968 to 2525 and back again.

Earthquakes in London includes burlesque strip shows, bad dreams, social breakdown, population explosion, worldwide paranoia. It is a fast and furious metropolitan crash of people, scenes and decades, as three sisters attempt to navigate their dislocated lives and loves, while their dysfunctional father, a brilliant scientist, predicts global catastrophe.

Mike Bartlett's contemporary and directed dialogue combines a strong sense of humanity with epic ambition, as well as finely-aimed shafts of political comment embedded effortlessly into every scene. Earthquakes in London represents modern playwriting at its most exciting and ambitious.

Ratings and reviews

This play is fantastic, there is so much going on. It's very clever and we'll written so therefore I would definitely recommend this play. The acting students from Preston college will be performing this near the end of this year.

About the author

Mike Barlett's debut, My Child (Royal Court, May 2007) saw him hailed by The Stage as 'one of the most exciting new talents to emerge in recent times'. He is a winner of the Old Vic New Voices Award for Artefacts (Bush Theatre), and is currently participating in the prestigious Pearson Playwrights Scheme. He won the Writer's Guild Tinniswood and Imison prizes for his radio play, Not Talking.