Nine Night Tickets

If you live in the Caribbean, or have holidayed there, you should be familiar with Nine Night. When someone dies, you mourn them via an extended wake lasting for nine days and nights. The final night is the most important, the night when you finally say goodbye to their spirit and encourage it to leave the house on its final journey. This splendid play delves deep into one particular Nine Night, originally an ancient African tradition, to delight audiences, and it's transferring from a smash hit run at the National to the West End's Trafalgar Theatre in late 2018.

You can expect a brilliant show co-produced by Trafalgar Theatre Productions, and a brand new play and book by Natasha Gordon. It is being hailed as a ‘remarkable debut play’ (Evening Standard), directed beautifully by Roy Alexander Weise, wonderfully touching and exuberantly funny. If you'd like to explore the rituals of family, food, music and mourning, this one's for you.

What's the story?
Gloria, a Jamaican woman living in the UK who arrived during Windrush, is seriously ill, on her deathbed. When the time comes for her to shuffle off this mortal coil, the Nine Night celebration begins. But Gloria’s British-born children and grandchildren find the tradition – effectively a party lasting more than a week - difficult to handle. Can they bear it?

The dead woman leaves behind an older daughter, Trudy, who she abandoned in Jamaica years and years ago. She also has two children in Britain. Their dramatic differences drive the action forward. Lorraine gave up her job to look after her mum, and she supplies the food. Robert is married to a white teacher, an entrepreneur who finds the traditions of the family's past annoying and irrelevant. And when Trudy turns up out of the blue, the sparks really begin to fly!

Natasha Gordon has managed to inhabit two cultures at once, creating a play that gives a good nod to the ancestral past while still living fully in the present . The Windrush scandal has made the play even more pertinent than it might have been, with a wider resonance.

The Designer is Rajha Shakiry, the Lighting Designer Paule Constable and the Sound Designer George Dennis. The Movement Director is Shelley Maxwell. And the critics are loving it. The Evening Standard says the play is “Remarkable. Captures the humour of everyday life.” The Stage says it's “A gift. The cast delivers perfect undulations of comedy and heartache.” And Time Out calls it “Intense, moving. Knife-edge power.”

Who is this show for?
This exuberant and touchingly funny play is suitable for people of any age. There are no age restrictions beyond the usual house rules.