Where's Your Mama Gone, New End

These days, big city punters get top dollar drama from small beer venues. The Meniere Chocolate Factory effortlessly knocks out award winners - most recently La Cage Aux Folles, A Little Night Music and Shirley Valentine. Mike Leigh's Ecstasy at The Duchess Theatre was a transfer from Hampstead. The Tricycle's revival of Broken Glass will move from Kilburn to The Vaudeville. The Almeida and The Donmar are consistently brilliant. Small is beautiful.

Baby, it's cold outside.

New End Theatre, Hampstead, is as small as they get. Set in an old hospital morgue behind the tube station, it has a stage the size of a shed. The repertoire is eclectic. Some of its productions are brilliant and others abysmal. Now the lights are going out on New End. It closes at the end of the month and its future is uncertain. 

Where's Your Mama Gone is the theatre's penultimate production (it will run, later this month, in tandem with Micheline Wandor's, Wanted). Written by Artistic Director Brian Daniels and directed by his daughter Alexa, it is a one hour drama based on the lives of two children who were put into care when their mother was murdered by the Yorkshire Ripper. In a series of moving and evenly paced exchanges the children become adults who struggle to combat the instincts that drive them inexorably towards abuse and addiction. It is an intimate piece with which to say goodbye to one of London's most intimate spaces. 

In conclusion:  A complex story simply told. There is also a foyer exhibition on Looked After (fostered) children. Farewell to an eccentric theatre in one of the prettiest parts of town. Let's hope New End finds a new home.

References
New End Theatre