Address
City Road
Chippendale
NSW
2008
Australia
Captioned Performances: Saturday, 22 January 2012 at both 2pm AND at 8pm
Frantic Assembly and National Theatre of Scotland (UK)
Australian Premiere
‘A brilliantly acted exploration of what makes boxers box and what happens when a shooting star shines brightly and falls to earth.‘ The Guardian
‘Like Black Watch before it, Beautiful Burnout has all the ingredients of a knock-out hit.‘ The Independent
Written by Bryony Lavery
Directed by Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett|
From the sweat-and-sawdust world of a boxing ring, Beautiful Burnout is about those soul-sapping three-minute rounds that determine which young boxers become gods and which gods become mortal.
This award-winning collaboration between Frantic Assembly and National Theatre of Scotland is stunning audiences with the same raw truth and explosive physicality captured in their tale of the Scottish regiment,Black Watch, a huge hit of Sydney Festival 2008.
In Beautiful Burnout, Tony-nominated playwright Bryony Lavery gives voice to working class youth seeking transcendent ways to escape. An athletic cast sweats, skips and punches at the dreams and terrors of gifted young boxers. Told from the ring on a revolving stage, against banks of screens, this is spectacular storytelling choreographed to the pulsing heartbeat of music by Underworld.
Through broken hearts and broken heads, heart-rendering intimacies and knockabout comedy, Beautiful Burnout is total immersion in the world of boxing.
Steven Hoggett (Director) appears as part of our free talks program Microscope: Festival Artists in conversation with Caroline Baum.