LynchPin Productions to Present APPLES IN WINTER in October

Surrey-based professional theatre company LynchPin Productions has announced it will be staging the European premiere of the award-winning play Apples in Winter by Jennifer Fawcett at The Playground Theatre, London, from 5-15 October 2022 (Press Night: 6 October).

The one-woman play centres on an American mother - Miriam - whose son committed an exceptionally violent crime. He has been on death row for 22 years. In a few hours the state will execute him. He is permitted the ritual of choosing a last meal: he asks for his mother's apple pie. As Miriam shows the audience how to make the perfect pie, they watch her attempt to understand what happened to her son - and how everything changed that night 22 years ago.

The convicted do not serve their sentence alone: their family also has to bear it. And where the sentence is the ultimate one - the death penalty - the families of the executed are little considered. This play provides a rare opportunity to hear an often silenced and ostracised voice: that of the mother of a perpetrator. Apples in Winter is an extraordinarily powerful and yet deeply compassionate play that challenges the audience to reflect on the impact of violent crime on its hidden victims. It journeys into the heart of difficult and charged questions about justice, forgiveness and what it is to try and love unconditionally.

The performance is augmented by the actor preparing and baking an apple pie on stage as the story unfolds. Miriam is played by Edie Campbell and the production is directed by Claire Parker.

Apples in Winter is the winner of the National New Play Network Smith Prize for Political Theatre and the Susan Glaspell Award. US-based Canadian author Jennifer Fawcett says: "I could not be more thrilled that LynchPin Theatre is producing this play in England."

A key feature of LynchPin's production is the programme of after-show discussions to explore the play's themes which will feature contributions from criminal justice practitioners, those involved in human rights and restorative justice, and individuals with lived experience of the criminal justice system. The 20th World Day Against the Death Penalty falls on 10 October.

Apples in Winter runs at The Playground Theatre, Latimer Road, London W10 6RQ from 5-15 October 2022 (no Sunday performance). Press night: Thursday 6 October

Tickets available from: APPLES in WINTER - 5-15th October | 7.30pm (theplaygroundtheatre.london) Prices: £22; £18 (concessions); £10

LynchPin

LynchPin Productions is professional theatre company mounting small-medium scale theatre. Founded in 1999 by director Jack Lynch and actor Edie Campbell it creates compelling theatre through biography, rehearsed readings and productions, with a particular focus on expressing seldom-heard voices.

Edie Campbell (Miriam)

Edie trained at Guildford School of Acting. Roles include: Alice Comyns Carr Rotten Perfect (Watts Gallery); Mrs Cheveley An Ideal Husband (Electric Theatre); Henry V/Prince Hal The Wooden O; Elsa Road to Mecca; Célimène The Misanthrope; Rosie Dancing at Lughnasa (Riverside Theatre, Iowa); Bess Abundance; Me HIM (University of Iowa Theatres); Emily Stilson Wings (Liar's Theatre, Iowa); and Alison Look Back in Anger (Pegasus, Oxford). Edie continues to perform LynchPin's one-woman play Emily Dickinson & I which has toured in the UK, Europe and North America.

Claire Parker (Director)

Claire has been involved in the arts her entire life starting as a child performer in the West End in the musical Annie and as Liesl in The Sound of Music. She continued to work extensively as an actress on stage & screen, including a season at The National Theatre and several ITV and BBC series, before leaving for France where she raised a family, ran a dance school, worked as a voice artist in Paris, and worked with cultural organisations, in publishing and began writing. On her return to the UK, Claire began collaborating with LynchPin as a performer, writer and director and her play Rotten Perfect was produced at the Watts Gallery, Compton, in 2017. LynchPin toured her most recent play, When the Cat's Away, in 2018 in the southeast of England. Claire directed the UK Premiere of George Purefoy Tilson's Amelia in 2019 at the Electric Theatre in Guildford.

Jennifer Fawcett (Playwright)

Canadian-born Jennifer is the winner of the NNPN Smith Prize and the Susan Glaspell Award for Apples in Winter. She won the NEFA National Theatre Project Award (with her company Working Group Theatre) for Out of Bounds, the Kennedy Center's National Science Playwriting Award for Atlas of Mud, and she was nominated for the ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award for Birth Witches. Her plays have been produced at Phoenix Theatre (Indianapolis), Centenary Stage Company (Hackettstown, NJ), Riverside Theatre (Iowa City), the Source Festival (Washington, DC), Hancher Auditorium (University of Iowa), Available Light Theatre (Columbus), Uprising Theatre Company (Minneapolis), Halcyon Theatre (Chicago) and the Drilling Company (New York), among others. She is a co-founder of Working Group Theatre, Iowa.

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