PRESS RELEASE – Wednesday 22nd January 2020 IMAGES CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / Website Francesca Moody Productions Sonia Friedman Productions in association with Bush Theatre present BABY REINDEER Written, performed and conceived by Richard Gadd Directed by Jon Brittain FOLLOWING AWARD-WINNING, SELL OUT RUNS AT THE EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL AND THE BUSH THEATRE, RICHARD GADD’S TOUR DE FORCE ONE-MAN SHOW WILL PLAY A STRICTLY LIMITED SEASON AT THE AMBASSADORS THEATRE IN THE WEST END A HARROWING STORY OF HOW ONE ACT OF KINDNESS PLUNGED RICHARD GADD INTO SIX YEARS OF RELENTLESS STALKING AND HARASSMENT TICKETS GO ON SALE FOR THE PRODUCTION TODAY WITH OVER 500 TICKETS PER WEEK PRICED AT £25 OR LESS “I did question whether I deserved it. Where did my wrongdoing stop and hers begin?” When award-winning comedian Richard Gadd offers a stranger a free cup of tea, he has no sense of the nightmare to come. One act of kindness. Six years of torment. The sell-out smash hit of last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Baby Reindeer is the “blistering” debut play (The Daily Telegraph) from Richard Gadd (Monkey See Monkey Do, Netflix's Sex Education). Directed by Olivier Award-winner Jon Brittain (Rotterdam), this is a chilling personal account of compulsion, delusion and obsession. Some admirers simply won’t be shaken off. “A haunted, haunting hour.” (The Guardian). Baby Reindeer will play a strictly limited London run at the Ambassadors Theatre ahead of a New York transfer to BAM in May 2020. Richard Gadd said: “Baby Reindeer has been one of the most challenging, yet rewarding experiences of my life. With an incredible team behind me, I have pushed myself to ridiculous limits in a show I find incredibly hard to say and do. The show is about the past six years of my life. An incredibly complicated, messy, confusing, and ultimately challenging period of time at the hands of a serial stalker hell-bent on ruining my life. It is a period of my life that I still look back on to this day with much unease. How did it get as bad as it did? How was it allowed to go on for so long? Why was there no help for me? I feel a moral duty to let people know the terrifying reality of going through something like this. I am absolutely delighted to be in the West End at such a prestigious venue like the Ambassadors. It is all a dream come true.” Francesca Moody said: “It has been truly incredible to watch the success of Richard's remarkable theatrical debut in Edinburgh and then at the Bush Theatre. Baby Reindeer is one of the most original and brilliant pieces of theatre I have ever seen and I passionately believe that it should be experienced by as many people as possible. I am thrilled to be partnering with Sonia Friedman Productions to bring Baby Reindeer to the West-End and a wider audience.” Sonia Friedman said: “In the early 2000s, I produced, programmed and oversaw dozens of productions at the Ambassadors Theatre. It occupies a special place in my heart as the venue where I learned to push the boundaries of what is possible in commercial theatre. SFP is thrilled to be returning with this extraordinary play featuring a truly break-out performance from Richard Gadd. Baby Reindeer is the first of several remarkable works my creative development team and I have sought out to bring to this beautiful and intimate venue. We are excited to present this original, vital, small-scale work which demands to be seen by a wider audience in London’s West End.” ***** ‘A haunting, unsettling monologue about the nature of obsession’ - Evening Standard **** ‘…tightens its grip with terrible inexorability’ – The Guardian ***** ‘A majestic performance – a reckoning, an exorcism’ - The Stage **** ‘A master narrator full of intelligent insight and sheer descriptive power.’ - The Scotsman ***** ‘Utterly compelling’ - WhatsOnStage.com **** ‘Baby Reindeer will follow you all the way home.’ - Financial Times WINNER Fringe First 2019 WINNER Stage Edinburgh Award 2019 FINALIST Offwestend Award for performance and video design FINALIST Sit Up Award FINALIST Mental Health Edinburgh Award Baby Reindeer will play at the Ambassadors Theatre from April 2nd – May 2nd 2020. Over 500 tickets each week will be priced at £25 or less. -ENDS- For further information please contact The Corner Shop PR on 020 7831 7657 Laura Myers [email protected] Natasha Krstic-Howe [email protected] LISTINGS Francesca Moody Productions Sonia Friedman Productions in association with Bush Theatre present Baby Reindeer Written, performed and conceived by Richard Gadd Directed by Jon Brittain Design by Cecilia Carey Sound Design by Keegan Curran Lighting Design by Peter Small Video Design by Ben Bull First performance 2nd April at 7.30pm Final performance 2nd May at 9.30pm Opening Night 6th April at 7.30pm Performance schedule: Monday – Thursday at 7.30pm; Friday and Saturday at 7pm and 9.30pm Age restriction 14+ Tickets from £10 http://www.sfpattheambassadors.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BabyReindeerLDN/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BabyReindeerLDN Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/BabyReindeerLDN/ Trigger Warnings: Stalking and harrassment, sexual assault, transphobia Photo by The Other Richard NOTES TO EDITORS Richard Gadd Richard is a multi-award winning writer, performer, and actor. His most recent show Baby Reindeer premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2019 where it won two awards - the Scotsman Fringe First Award for New Writing and a Stage Award for Acting Excellence. The show then went onto a five-week run at the Bush Theatre in London and was nominated for an Off West End Theatre Award for Best Performer. His preview show, Monkey See Monkey Do, won the prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it was also nominated for a Total Theatre Award for Innovation. The show subsequently had several sell-out runs at London’s Soho Theatre, toured the UK and Europe, and had a run at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where it was nominated for the 2017 Barry Award and was broadcast on Comedy Central. His other shows Waiting for Gaddot, Breaking Gadd, and Cheese & Crack Whores were also Edinburgh Fringe hits and all went on to three week runs or more in the Soho Theatre. The former won the Amused Moose Best Edinburgh Fringe Show Award 2015 and was nominated for a Malcolm Hardee Award For Innovation 2015. In addition, Richard won a Chortle Comedian’s Comedian Award 2017, as well as being nominated for an Off West End Theatre Award for Best Performer in the same year. Richard is also a successful actor, who starred opposite Daniel Mays in the BAFTA-nominated BBC2 single drama Against the Law – “surely a breakout role for him,” (The Guardian). Other key acting credits include SKY's Code 404, BBC3’s Clique, and E4’s Tripped. He also recently played a lead role in Sky Arts’ film One Normal Night. The Independent described his appearance as, “a quite wonderful performance,” and The Times described it as, “moving and very well acted.” Richard is currently filming alongside Stephen Graham and Daniel Mays, in Sky One’s new six-part comedy series Code 404. In addition, Richard is also a writer who has written episodes of Netflix smash- hit Sex Education, as well as Ultimate Worrier for Dave and The Last Leg for Channel Four where he is also one of their correspondents.He also recently recorded his own pilot for BBC Radio 4 with Dabster Productions, The Richard Gadd Show, which aired in July 2018. He has also had several written projects broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland. Jon Brittain Jon Brittain is a playwright, comedy writer and director. His play Rotterdam earned him a nomination for the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. Other work includes the critically acclaimed Billionaire Boy: The Musical, the cult hit Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho and its sequel Margaret Thatcher Queen of Game Shows, and the Scotsman Fringe First Award- winning A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad). He directed John Kearns’s Fosters Award- winning shows Sight Gags for Perverts and Shtick, and the follow-ups Don’t Bother, They’re Here and Double Take and Fade Away, as well as shows for Tom Allen, Mat Ewins and Tom Rosenthal. For TV he has been a staff writer on Cartoon Network’s The Amazing World of Gumball and on Netflix’s The Crown. Francesca Moody Productions Francesca Moody Productions commissions, develops and presents brave, entertaining and compelling new theatre. They work with the UK’s leading playwrights and discover and nurture new talent to produce bold, award-winning shows with universal appeal and commercial potential. Since launching in 2018 the company has been awarded three Fringe First Awards and produced work in London, New York, on tour across the UK and at the Edinburgh Festival. FMP is led by Francesca Moody who is best known as the original producer of the multi-award- winning FLEABAG by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, which she has produced globally on behalf on DryWrite, most recently in London’s West-End at the Wyndhams Theatre. Francesca is also the former Producer of British New-Writing theatre company Paines Plough where she worked on plays by the UK’s leading playwrights including Dennis Kelly, Duncan Macmillan and Kate Tempest. For more information on Francesca Moody Productions please visit www.francescamoody.com Sonia Friedman Productions Sonia Friedman Productions (SFP) is an international production company responsible for some of the most successful theatre productions in London and New York.