Tales From the Bar of Lost Souls, Exeter Phoenix, Tuesday 9th March

Imitating the dog, one of the UK’s most original and innovative performance theatre companies, have teamed up with the National theatres of Greece and Cyprus, as part of the British Council Creative Collaboration programme, to stage the UK premiere of their latest ambitious production Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls.

The play will premiere at Exeter Phoenix Theatre on Tuesday 9 March at 7.30pm and 9.15pm.

At the end of his life a dying man turns to a young woman and tries to put right a wrong committed many years ago. As he recounts the story of his past he is taken back to The Bar of Lost Souls, a place where, it is said, your deepest desires become real.

The Bar of Lost Souls can be found at the quayside. You will know it when you see it. All sorts of dissolute people can be found there: pimps, whores, sailors and petty criminals, the police and even judges. If you open the door you’ll smell the stale air and you’ll be able to hear singing from the little stage at the back of its darkened room. If you dare go in your best have eyes in the back of your head, you have to be so careful not to get your purse snatched or your face slashed. Yes, it’s dangerous all right. But if you manage to get in, you’ll never forget the experience.

The show, which has already played to sold out audiences in Athens and Nicosia, takes as its starting point the melting pot of Mediterranean port communities, where notions of national borders and identity are challenged by the ever-changing mix of ethnicities and nationalities, the activity of commerce, the blurring of the lines between legal and criminal behaviour and by the suspension of the norms that attempt to govern sexual and political orthodoxy.

Part musical, part dream play, Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls is a magical realist story of forbidden love, criminality and the possibility of finding redemption in the unlikeliest of places.

Exquisitely designed by Laura Hopkins (Blackwatch), the audience watch the action through the bar’s window, as a carnival of unsavoury characters reveal themselves and the haunting sequence of tales of murder, love and forgiveness unfolds.

imitating the dog are one of the UK’s leading national and international performance companies, who over the last 10 years have constantly satisfied audiences and critics with their savvy design and innovative testing of theatrical and narrative form.

The company make performance work which experiments with the role of story-telling and narrative in the contemporary theatrical experience with the use of digital media, design and physical performance to create off-kilter worlds within which public and private obsessions – identity, death, love and sexuality – are explored.

Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls is part of the British Council’s Creative Collaboration programme.

The overall aim of the Creative Collaborations programme is to enrich the cultural life of Europe and its surrounding country and to build trust and understanding across communities by generating dialogue and debate.

Tickets for Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls are priced at £10 (Concessions £8) and can be purchased at the Box Office by calling 01392 667080   http://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk

For more info on Imitating the Dog visit http://www.imitatingthedog.co.uk.

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