‘Imagine being him. Every day you wake up. You’re tired. Your body doesn’t work properly… You said it – you’d kill yourself.’
Two teenagers sneak into an old man’s home for a secret meeting. A young couple try to build their future whilst looking after an ailing parent. A care home offers its residents the opportunity to unburden their children.
James Fritz’s play The Fall takes a funny, moving and candid look at young people’s relationships to older people, confronting the frightening prospect of ageing in a country undergoing crises of housing and care.
It was commissioned and premiered by the National Youth Theatre at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 2016, and revived at Southwark Playhouse in 2018.
‘Takes a candid look at young people’s relationship with their elders, mixing humour with a deeper contemplation of life and death… delicately outspoken writing’
— Broadway World
‘[A] short, sharp shock of a play… youth theatre at its most mature, and most dazzling’
— Guardian
‘Perfectly pitched as a play for young actors… sets a new standard for youth theatre’
— The Stage
‘Intelligent, absorbing… confirms Fritz as a major new voice in British drama’
— The Reviews Hub
‘It’s dreamlike, but gritty at the same time, and gripping… it’s a little glimpse of a faintly dystopian future that hits home because it doesn’t take things too far… what’s impressive about Fritz’s writing is that he manages to horrify with his vision of human coldness, and yet it’s not propaganda: it recognises that there are no simple statements to be made.’
— Exeunt
