Desire and Destruction Season 2 at Riverside

WHETHER it's a banker's desire leading to the destruction of our economy, a terrorist's desire for justice that leads to the destruction of lives, or an individual's desire for satisfaction that leads to the destruction of a friendship or relationship, the themes of Desire & Destruction are very pertinent to our species.

The Riverside Theatre in Coleraine launch their autumn season with 12 professional and three amateur drama productions on a desire & destruction theme reflecting the state of society in 2010.

If you can bear to laugh at the banking situation, Dario Fo’s reworking of the political satire Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay for today’s hike in supermarket prices may suit you.

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Bruiser Theatre Company present Low Pay, Don’t Pay on October 7. The main targets of Fo’s ideologically inspired attacks have been capitalism, imperialism and corruption in government.

Accidental Death of an Anarchist, also by Dario Fo, on October 20, from Love&Madness Theatre Company, opens up a debate on how people view justice, when railway worker is accused of trying to blow up a bank. Fo's plays are rooted in old comic tradition to open audiences' eyes to societal injustices; "emulating the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden".

Desire in all its permutations, with varied consequences and emotions, is presented in I’m a Minger; a teenage search for peer acceptance; in Nun the Wiser, a search for enlightenment that takes a funny turn; in Think No Evil of Us – an unusual childhood connection with Kenneth Williams; in the diabolical and manipulative Richard III; in the searing narrative The Rape of Lucrece; and in the revenge thriller Hamlet: Prince of Denmark.

And lest you think we’ve forgotten how to laugh there’s Sam Cree’s Don’t Tell the Wife; Women Behaving Madly by Rona Munro; Jimeoin: Something Smells Funny, Defending the Caveman with Mark Little aka Joe Mangel from Neighbours, Conal Gallen and Tim McGarry’s Irish History Lesson. Oh yes and lots of music.

Tickets are on sale now at www.riversidetheatre.org.uk