SCREAMING SECRETS Comes to the Tristan Bates Theatre

'SCREAMING SECRETS', written by writer and philosopher Alexander Matthews, forms part of Matthews' debut two-play season at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden.

The first play, 'Screaming Secrets' is set in 1975, in a world of free love, flared trousers, and deep thinking.

Antonio (Jack Gordon) is a young, hip philosopher who suddenly discovers that he's not as healthy as he thinks. Surrounded by noisy, vocal friends and family, Antonio has to decide whether or not to tell them.

Set over one evening in Antonio's poky flat in north London, the cast includes Antonio's irascible father Alessandro (Gregory Cox), his emotional sister Gina (Ilaria Ambrogi), flirtatious girlfriend Monika (Triana Terry) drunken publisher friend Hugo (Theo Devaney) and miserable doctor Simon (Ben Warwick).

'Screaming Secrets' explores our need to be understood and appreciated. It places relationships and moral dilemmas under scrutiny through the power of the writer's philosophical lens.

"We all have secrets," says Alexander Matthews, "but because life is so fragmented and fast moving, and we all have widely different agendas, when we do open our hearts (and scream our secrets) we are often not heard or understood...at least on our own terms or indeed, above the cacophony of modern life.

Cast:

Ilaria Ambrogi - Gina
llaria is from Italy where her theatre credits include Peter Pan (Teatro Vascello, Rome) and Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. In 2007 she wrote her first one-woman show, The Echo, and performed it at Teatro dell'Orologio, in Rome. In 2009 she moved to the US, where she trained with Susan Batson and worked in numerous theatre and film productions.

Gregory Cox - Alessandro
Gregory's extensive acting credentials include Oliver! (West End), Little Lies (West End and Toronto), Only When I Laugh (Hong Kong), The Picture of Dorian Gray (UK tour), Death of a Salesman (Frankfurt English Theatre), Tale of Two Cities, Hamlet, King Lear, Henry IV, Much Ado About Nothing (UK and abroad) and many more. TV and film work include Doctors, Eastenders, Poirot and many more.

THEO DEVANEY - Hugo

Theo's UK theatre credits include Caligula (Union Theatre), War & Peace (Shared Experience) and more. In 2012 Theo moved to Vancouver, Canada and wrote and produced the award-winning short play, Run and became best known to UK TV audiences as Gavin MacLeod in the long running TV series Supernatural; he also appeared in the films Psych and Night at the Museum: Secrets of the Tomb.

Jack Gordon - Antonio
Jack's theatre credits include RADA productions Carmen 1936, The Duchess of Malfi, Odysseus, As You Like It, A Month in the Country; plus War Horse (National Theatre/West End), Romeo and Juliet (Battersea Arts Centre). Film credits include Northern Soul, Captain America, Heartless, and his TV credits include New Blood, The Crimson Field, The Great Train Robbery (all BBC) and Primeval Series 3.

TRIANA TERRY - Monika
Triana's first acting role was in Martin Kemp's film Stalker (2010) which she followed up with Just For The Record alongside Steven Berkoff and can be seen in the 2017 independent film London Fields directed by Matthew Cullen. Triana's theatre credits include Doctor Faustus; she's also a self-taught painter and has exhibited her work at the Saatchi Gallery and The Hospital Club among others.

BEN WARWICK - Simon
Ben's theatre credits include Frankenstein (Blackeyed Theatre), Jane Eyre, Hamlet (English Touring Theatre), The Deep Blue Sea (Watford Palace), Pentecost, The Oedipus Plays (Royal National Theatre), Macbeth (US Tour), Miss Julie (Soho Theatre). Films: Blood Moon, War Game, Canakkale Yolun Sonu and TV includes Mary Queen of Scots (BBC) Emmerdale (ITV), The Big Picture, Five Years.

Tickets: £18 (£15 concs); previews £12
Box office: 020 3841 6611 and online at www.tristanbatestheatre.co.uk

ALEXANDER MATTHEWS:
Alexander Matthews grew up in a haphazard, literary household in the USA - visitors to Matthews' childhood home included the poets Robert Graves and WH Auden as well as novelist Laurie Lee and the American cartoonist James Thurber. His father, TS Matthews, wrote an unauthorised biography of TS Eliot; Martha Gellhorn, his stepmother, was the third wife of Ernest Hemingway.

"Robert Graves lived with us and Auden visited," remembers Matthews. "In fact, I hosted Auden when he came up to Toronto to speak to the Literary Society at our college. I was certainly inspired by them and felt particularly close to TS Eliot's writing."

Alexander taught Philosophy in a number of universities between 1975 and 1989; in 1986 he was awarded a Visiting Fellowship to Princeton University. His published book is called 'A Diagram of Definition'; he also published a paper arguing against 'the big bang theory'. He wrote three poetic dramas including 'Screaming Secrets' in 2001 and 'Glass Roots' in 2003 and currently resides in Devon.

Since it was founded in 1999, Alexander has chaired the Martha Gellhorn Trust Prize Committee which offers an annual prize for journalism, for the kind of reporting that distinguished Gellhorn: "the view from the ground"...essentially a very human story that penetrates the established version of events to arrive at the truth. It is little wonder that Alexander's own works offer a deep and fascinating study into the minutiae of human behaviour.

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