

TUSK TUSK
by POLLY STENHAM
"Shhhh.... Be still! There's a man upstairs ... When I stop the music, the first person to move has to leave the room. Those are the rules as they stand..."
It’s a ghost story without a ghost. In a bare bones London town house, three siblings, haunted by the sudden disappearance of their mother, wait desperately for her call. Ellie, a ‘metro-sexual warrior’, makes up the rules; an outlaw, ‘king of all wild things’ draws on the walls; while Mother Maggie climbs them… They count hours, minutes, seconds and sheep as they try desperately, to fall asleep.
Few playwrights who have arrived on British stages in the last ten years have provoked more fascination or excitement than Polly Stenham. She is a writer for a world in search of authenticity. Intuitive, raw and often terrifying, Stenham wrote this exquisite play with children at the centre of it, when she was merely an adolescent herself.
at St Martins Youth Arts Centre from the 25th of June - 7th of July, 2019
CAMERON WOODHEAD, The Age
CAMERON COLWELL, The Music
DARBY TURNBULL, TheatrePeople