Presented at Canberra’s award-winning home of live storytelling and performance, The Street Theatre presents Twenty Minutes With The Devil by Luis Gómez Romero and Desmond Manderson in a world premiere season from 18 June 2022.
The fruit of a remarkable collaboration between two internationally renowned law academics and writers from very different cultures, Twenty Minutes With The Devil is a fictionalised story of a drug lord and two hapless cops locked in a room waiting for the army or cartel to arrive.
Part black comedy, part thriller, part magical realism, the playwrights create a gripping tale of the crisis of justice in our times inspired by the capture of El Chapo, Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, in 2016.
More than a story about drug wars, the play challenges prejudices and situates drug wars as part of a broader and deeper global crisis of justice. Their story is a parable for the many crises – of politics, of inequality, of power – that confront us in Australia.
Twenty Minutes With The Devil draws on traditions of narcoliteratura and magic realism, fairy tales and detective fiction, in a style that blends gritty realism with edgy wit.
A world like and unlike our own, familiar and strange, peppered with Spanish and English, is filled with ghosts and hauntings, producers and consumers, symbols and myths, fragility and violence, madness, family and fathers.
Ordinary people with virtues and weaknesses are challenged in a situation bigger than themselves with the clock ticking, choices to be made, and nowhere to hide.
Twenty Minutes With The Devil comes to life with an outstanding cast of PJ Williams (Diary of a Madman) as El Ticho, Joanna Richards (Venus in Fur) as Angela and Raoul Craemer (Pigman’s Lament) as Romulo, with direction by The Street’s Artistic Director Caroline Stacey and a creative team of designers Imogen Keen, Antony Hateley, James Tighe.
Law and justice are no longer synonyms in this powerful new Australian story in a year that also marks the 50th anniversary of US President Nixon’s declaration of a war on drugs.
Audiences can expect a high-octane poetic theatrical experience set nowhere and everywhere in this new Street production and cultural response creating connections between law and justice and the arts.
Director: Caroline Stacey | Featuring: PJ Williams, Joanna Richards, Raoul Craemer | Set & Costume Designer: Imogen Keen | Lighting Designer: Antony Hateley | Sound Designer & Composer: James Tighe
Twenty Minutes With The Devil
The Street Theatre, 15 Childers Street, City West (Canberra)
Season: 18 – 25 June 2022 (preview: 17 June)
Information and Bookings: www.thestreet.org.au
Image: PJ Williams as El Ticho in Twenty Minutes With The Devil – photo by Creswick Collective