In bustling St Pancras train station, Georgie, a free spirit, impulsively plants a kiss on the neck of Alex, a reserved 70-year-old woman sitting on a bench.
When Georgie unexpectedly reappears at Alex’s shop, the older woman is drawn into her unpredictable world, and her once quiet, orderly existence bursts into chaos and newfound vibrancy.
Through subtle humour and quiet poetry, Heisenberg unravels the complexities of human relationships, capturing with poignant intimacy the delicate and often comical dance of connection. This radical reimagining of Simon Stephens’ classic play, with Alex now cast as a woman, stars Olivier Award-winning Jenny Galloway as Alex and internationally acclaimed Faline England as Georgie.
Directed by Arcola Theatre Artistic Associate Katharine Farmer, this female-led production offers fresh insights into the universal themes of identity, loneliness and the fluctuation of love.
And on 1 May, join us for a Q&A with Olivier-winning playwright Simon Stephens.
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Running time
90 minutes -
Age guidance
12+
“A complex choreography of emotional vulnerability”
“A brilliantly written play expertly realised”
“A brave new take… bringing something even more intriguing to the story.”- All That Dazzles
“A tight, vivid drama… exhilarating bursts of music match the rush of Alex and Georgie’s relationship.”
Production photos
The Company
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Jenny Galloway
Alex
Jenny Galloway
Alex
Theatre includes: Ballet Shoes (National Theatre) Milk and Gall (Theatre 503) The Welkin (National) Starry Messenger (Wyndhams) Absolute Hell (National ) Forty Years On (Chichester), Mr Foote’s Other Leg (Hampstead and Theatre Royal Haymarket), Tiger Country (Hampstead). Hay Fever (Noel Coward), Anna Christie (Donmar), Cause Célèbre (Old Vic), My Fair Lady (Paris), After The Dance (National Theatre), Madame de Sade (Donmar at Wyndhams), The Music Man (Chichester Festival), Les Misérables (Palace/Broadway/25 th Anniversary at O2), Henry V (Manchester Royal Exchange), Mary Poppins (Prince Edward and New Amsterdam, New York), Mamma Mia! – Olivier Award (Prince Edward), Showboat (Royal Albert Hall), My One and Only – Olivier nomination (Piccadilly), Medea (Queen’s), How I Learned to Drive, Nine (Donmar), Sweeney Todd (Derby Playhouse), Oliver! (London Palladium), The Boys from Syracuse – Olivier Award, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Regent’s Park), Candide (Liverpool Everyman), Electra (Donmar), Romeo and Juliet (Norwich Playhouse), Moll Flanders, Lettice and Lovage (Watermill Newbury), Happy Birthday Brecht, Marat Sade, Square Rounds, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Coriolanus, The Mother, Entertaining Strangers, Yerma, A Chorus of Disapproval, Jaques Brel is Alive and Well, (National Theatre), Solo Show Pirate Jenny (National Theatre and Triad Theater, New York). Film: includes Magpie, Wicked Little Letters, Come Away, Crooked House, London Road, In Tranzit, About a Boy, The Clandestine Marriage, Frankenstein, Fierce Creatures, A Knight’s Tale, Johnny English, Little Dorrit. Television: includes Lockerbie, Endeavour,The Split, The Queens Gambit, Good Omens, Fleabag, Cuffs, The Coroner, Trollied, Father Brown, Silent Witness A Young Doctor’s Notebook, Miss Marple: The Pale Horse, Doctors, Wyrdsister, Armadillo, Whistle-Blower, There’s a Viking in My Bed, Comics, Broken Lives, Casualty, Grange Hill.
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Faline England
Georgie
Faline England
Georgie
FALINE ENGLAND is an award-winning actress who was last seen in The Realistic Joneses with Gare St. Lazare Ireland at the Dublin Theatre Festival (nomination Best Ensemble The Irish Times Theatre Awards). U.S. stage credits include The Realistic Joneses and Heisenberg Rubicon Theatre/Laguna Playhouse (Los Angeles Drama Circle Critics Nomination Lead Performer) as well as The Rubicon’s Gulf View Drive, Crimes of the Heart, Turn of the Screw, and All My Sons; west coast productions of Chicago, The Rover, Three Sisters, Playboy of the Western World, The Changeling, Heartbreak House, The Tempest, All in the Timing, Finnegan’s Wake; Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night with Shakespeare Center L.A.; Carry the World: Women and Peace with Creative Visions and Purge! with James Donlon & Co. Among her many film and television credits are “9-1-1,” “Station 19,” “Criminal Minds,” and “C.S.I.”. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband actor David Meunier.
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Simon Stephens
Writer
Simon Stephens
Writer
Simon Stephens’ plays include Vanya, Cornelia Street, Morning Sun, Fortune, Light Falls, Maria, Fatherland, Rage, Heisenberg, Nuclear War, Song from Far Away; Birdland, Carmen Disruption, Blindsided, Morning, Three Kingdoms, Wastwater, Punk Rock, The Trial of Ubu, Marine Parade, Sea Wall, Harper Regan, Pornography, Motortown, On the Shore of the Wide World, One Minute, Country Music, Christmas, Port, Herons and Bluebird. He has adapted Jose Saramago’s Blindness for the stage and also Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. He has written English language versions of Jon Fosse’s I Am the Wind; Odon Von Horvath’s Kasimir and Karoline (titledThe Funfair); Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House; Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull and Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera. He has presented four series of the Royal Court Playwright’s Podcast. His book “A Working Diary” is published by Methuen. Simon Stephens has been an Associate at the Royal Court, London and Steep, Chicago and a board member of Paines Plough. He has been an Associate Artist at the Lyric, Hammersmith, a Professor of Scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University and an Associate Professor at the Danish National School of the Performing Arts, Copenhagen.
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Katharine Farmer
Director
Katharine Farmer
Director
Katharine’s directing credits include 23.5 Hours (Park 200) and Never Not Once (Park 90) at Park Theatre; The Least We Could Do at The Hope Theatre; The Mullah of Downing Street at Warwick Arts Centre; Other People’s Money at the Southwark Playhouse; Kiss Me at The Wardrobe Theatre Bristol; and Pig Farm at the formerly known St. James Theatre. For 8 years, Katharine held an O1 visa for 5 years and worked as the Director of International Programming at Rubicon Theatre Company in California, where her production of Gulf View Drive won Best Production of a Play (large theatre) at the LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards. She has received 8 LA Times Critics Picks for her productions at Rubicon, and a total of 16 Ovation nominations. Her other plays at Rubicon include Never Not Once, Heisenberg, South Pacific, Gulf View Drive, Incognito, See Rock City and Last Train to Nibroc. Katharine’s productions of Arlene Hutton’s The Nibroc Trilogy are available to download on Digital Theatre. Katharine has also co-directed 23.5 Hours by Carey Crim at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in Canada and taken work to the Bermuda Festival. She is the Artistic Director of The Playwright’s Laboratory, is an Artistic Associate at Arcola Theatre, and runs her own theatre company Blue Touch Paper Productions.
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Rajiv Pattani
Lighting Designer
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Beth Suzanna
Artwork Design
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Hugh Sheehan
Sound Designer
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Anna Alvarez
Choreographer
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Iben Bering Sorensen
Stage Manager
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Sarah Jane Schostack
Assistant Director
The World Premiere of Heisenberg was commissioned and presented by Manhattan Theatre Club, New York, USA (Lynne Meadow Artistic Director; Barry Grove, Executive Producer) on May 19 2015. It was subsequently presented by Elliott Harper Productions at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End, London, opening on 9 October 2017.