Rondo Summer 2019

Box office 0333 666 3366
TOWNSEND THEATRE PRODUCTIONS
Rouse, Ye Women
By Neil Gore and John Kirkpatrick
Wed 17 Apr • 8pm • Full £14 Concs £12
• Professional Theatre
Mary Macarthur and the Women Chainmakers – a folk
opera by Neil Gore and John Kirkpatrick
In 1910 the women chainmakers of Cradley Heath
focussed the world’s attention on the plight of
Britain’s low-paid women workers involved in the
‘home-working sweated industries’, hammering out
chain-links in sheds in the backyards of their homes
with their babies and children for 5 shillings (25p) for a
50-hour week.
Led by the charismatic union organiser and
campaigner, Mary Reid Macarthur, hundreds of
women laid down their tools to strike for a living wage.
The success of the ten-week strike more than doubled
their earnings and helped to make the principle of a
national minimum wage a reality.
Through rousing traditional songs and moving ballads, Townsend Theatre Productions reveals
the horrors of sweated labour, Mary Macarthur’s stunning national campaign to expose the
perpetrators of this appalling employment, the universal sympathy for the workers, the flood of
donations, and the events that led to a final victory.
“A powerful story, powerfully told.” Clare Brennan, The Observer
Guardian Readers’ Top Favourite Shows 2017
Alfie Brown: Lunatic
Thu 18 Apr • 8pm • Full £10 • Comedy
Fresh from a complete sell out run at the Edinburgh
Festival, Alfie Brown is going on his first UK Tour and
he remains charming and disgusting.
His new show is about identity politics, trying to be a
good father in a horrible world and being responsibly
horny in the wake of wide-spread male sex crimes.
He provides no answers, only questions. Society’s
new-found fondness for moral certainty is the subject
of a search and destroy mission by Brown.
They were wrong all along: it turns out if you believe
in something, you’ll fall for anything.
“It is tricky to write 350 sensible words when you
come out a show simply thinking “Wow! F**k! Wow!”
The Scotsman