Coinciding with the UK's Black History Month in October, a new play The House That Will Not Stand will be playing at the Tricycle Theatre London.
Starring Martina Laird as Beartrice, the play is a bewitching new drama of desire, jealously, murder and voodoo.
"You may be the wealthiest colored woman in New Orleans but you built this house on sand, lies and dead bodies."
Martina Laird plays Beartrice. Her theatre work includes Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (National Theatre and tour), Hopelessly Devoted (Birmingham REP), Inheritance (Live Theatre), All the Little Things We Crushed (Almeida Theatre), Bad Blood Blues (Stratford East), Mules (Young Vic), Othello(Donmar Warehouse), The Five Wives of Maurice Pinder (National Theatre), and for the RSC, Arabian Nights (also West End and world tour), The White Devil, Three Hours After Marriage and Troilus and Cressida.
For television, her work includes Missing, Shameless, Free Agents, Casualty (series regular), Little Big Mouth, Always and Everyone, Wing and a Prayer, Jonathan Creek, The Governor and Little Napoleons; and for film, Blitz, Forget Me Not and The Hurting.
The House That Will Not Stand:
New Orleans, 1836. Following an era of French colonial rule and relative racial acceptance, Louisiana's 'free people of color' are prospering. Beatrice has become one of the city's wealthiest women through her relationship with a rich white man.
However, when her partner mysteriously dies, the foundations of freedom she has built for herself and their three unwed daughters begins to crumble. Society is changing, racial divides are growing, and as the household turns on each other in their fight for survival, it could cost them everything.
A bewitching new drama of desire, jealously, murder and voodoo.
The rest of the cast include Ronke Adekoluejo, Ayesha Antoine, Michele Austin, Tanya Moodie, Clare Perkins, Danusia Samal, Paul Shelley
Director: Indhu Rubasingham; Designer: Tom Piper; Lighting Designer: Paul Anderson Sound Designer Carolyn Downing; Composer Paul Englishby; Movement Director: Lucy Hind
