Jamaican Playwright Pat Cumper's THE KEY GAME Set For US Premiere This Month

The Key Game, the critically acclaimed play by London-based Jamaican playwright Patricia Cumper, will have its American premiere with a limited Off Broadway run at the New Perspectives Studio in Manhattan from October 17 through 28.

The four-character drama, which was commissioned by Britain's Talawa Theatre Company and had its world premiere in London in 2004, was a Time Out London Critics pick. The New York production is being produced by Banana Boat Productions in collaboration with New Perspectives Theatre Company and is directed by Banana Boat Artistic Director Merlina Rich.

The Key Game is set in a rundown psychiatric hospital in Jamaica during the 1990's. When the Jamaican government reveals plans to demolish the facility in favor of erecting an expensive building complex, the hospital's last three in-patients and their primary caregiver­- a male nurse - ponder their uncertain futures and how they will function in the outside world.

The cast features James Foster Jr, Leajato Amara Robinson, Jonathan Michaelson Swain and Marc Webster.

According to Jamaican born director Rich, who founded Banana Boat Productions two decades ago to bring Caribbean stories and culture to the attention of American audiences, The Key Game remains as timely now as it was in its original production nearly fifteen years ago, making it an easy choice for her 2018 production.

"What (playwright) Pat Cumper has done here is to present an intimate, moving and ultimately enlightening homage to the resilience we all have within us when facing life-changing circumstances," she says.

"These four men, bound together by their history and their own individual challenges, have to now confront a nameless, faceless governing force which is totally indifferent to their vulnerabilities and their fates, becoming, in effect, their fiercest ever antagonist. The Key Game offers a riveting yet tender story of four interdependent lives in transition, and, given its setting, sheds an interesting light on the spectrum between what is considered normal and abnormal."

She adds that at a time when so many New York neighborhoods are also being regentrified, and residents are being forced out after building their lives around the same communities for generations, audiences of today will connect in a very real and visceral way to the situation and the story told in the play.

The Key Game will play Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 3pm from October 17 through 28.

The New Perspectives Studio is located at 458 West 37th Street at 10th Avenue in Manhattan.

Advance tickets available at - www.bananaboatproductions.org