The Divide

Written not as a play but as a ‘narrative for voices’ by Alan Ayckbourn and directed by Old Vic Baylis Director Annabel Bolton, The Divide unfolds in a dystopian society of repression and seething insurrection.

In the aftermath of a deadly contagion which has decimated the population, contact between men and women has become fatal. Under the dictates of an elusive and authoritarian Preacher, an unthinkable solution has been enforced. The adult survivors are now segregated by gender and, physically separated, men wear white as a sign of their purity and women – still deemed infected – are clothed in black as a mark of their sin.

As new social norms prevail, brother and sister Elihu and Soween grow up learning the ways of their tightly controlled society. As they begin to glimpse the cracks in the system, Elihu falls for Giella, the daughter of two radical mothers, risking fatal disease and threatening to ignite a bloody revolution.