Written by
Lucy Prebble
Directed by
Hannah Goodwin
Based on the book by
Luke Harding
Tickets go on sale 27 September
About the show
“The second you start telling a story, you start telling a lie.”
Part biography, part spy drama, part absurdist nightmare, A Very Expensive Poison looks at the true story of the assassination by poison of Alexander Litvinenko by the Russian secret service in London in 2006.
At this time of unnerving global crises and with the rumblings of a new Cold War, A Very Expensive Poison sends us careening through the shadowy world of international espionage from Moscow to Mayfair. In the strange convergence of global politics and radioactive villainy, a man pays with his life.
The play by Lucy Prebble (co-Executive Producer and writer of Succession, Enron, and The Effect) premiered at London’s The Old Vic in 2019 and is an astute mix of real events, vaudeville and thriller. In this production by Belvoir Resident Director Hannah Goodwin, we are served layer on layer of Putinesque post-truth theatricality.
Lucy Prebble is executive producer and writer on the BAFTA, Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning HBO drama Succession, for which she has also won a WGA and a PGA Award.
She is the writer and co-creator of I Hate Suzie, which was nominated for five BAFTAs including Best Drama, Best Writer and Best Actress. It was a huge hit for Sky, topping many major publications’ lists for best shows of 2020 in both the UK and the US where it is available on HBOMax. The sequel series, I Hate Suzie Too, premiered at the end of 2022 to rave reviews.
For theatre, Lucy has written the political and emotional meta-thriller A Very Expensive Poison (2019), which was a sell-out, five-star hit for the Old Vic and was Olivier-nominated for Best New Play. It won the Critics Circle Award for Best New Play and Best New Production of a Play at the Broadway World Awards. It also won her the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. Before that, The Effect, a study of love and neuroscience, was performed at the National Theatre and won the Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play.
Lucy is the writer of Enron, about the infamous corporate fraud, which transferred to the West End after sell-out runs at both the Royal Court and Chichester Festival Theatre. Her first play, The Sugar Syndrome (2003) won her the George Devine Award and was performed at the Royal Court.
Hannah Goodwin is Resident Director of Belvoir. She was awarded the Andrew Cameron Fellowship in 2020 and was part of the Artists at Work creative development initiative at Belvoir during the COVID shutdown.
She was co-director of both Alana Valentine’s Wayside Bride and Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, playing in rep at Belvoir in 2022. She directed Never Closer downstairs at Belvoir in 2022. In 2023, she recently directed Blessed Union for Belvoir, as part of Sydney World Pride.
Cast & Company
TBC
