Fast, a full-length psychological thriller coming to London
Upstairs at The Gatehouse, Highgate Village, London N6 4BD Tuesday 29th October – Sunday 17th November 2024
Celebrity influencers, protein shake peddlers, diet pill pushers; the story of ‘Dr’ Linda Hazzard shows us these modern phenomena aren’t actually so modern.
Fast brings to light the true story of ‘Dr’ Linda Hazzard — complex, charismatic and utterly driven — whose promotion of her own radical fasting ‘cure’, gripped the press and divided a nation.
Following huge successes in Brighton, Edinburgh and London, playwright Kate Barton has developed her original one-act play, with award-winning screenwriter Stephen Bennett (who also directs), into a full-length psychological thriller that will have audiences gripped from start to finish as the truth about Hazzard’s ‘victims’ is uncovered.
Fasting remains a point of discussion with the global diet pills market currently valued at 1.47 billion US dollars. Fast explores a woman in a man’s world; whatever her motives, arguably her determination to succeed was an inspiration to many women aspiring to build a career in medicine. Hazzard’s practices raised questions, prompted police investigations and challenged law makers, but were her intentions good or fuelled by self-gain?
Using her memoirs and incidents from her life, the play explores her story and society’s self-serving cynicism looking at how far we will go for a bit of attention and to feel good about ourselves.
Sarah Thom (Grace, Grantchester & Home Fires, ITV; The Final Curtain, St James Theatre, Assembly & UK Tour; A Taste of Honey, National Theatre) will play ‘Dr’ Linda Hazzard.
She is joined by Karl Wilson (Witness for the Prosecution, County Hall; Masters of the Air, Apple TV), Jermaine Dominique (Macbeth, Globe; The Great Gatsby, West End; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, National Theatre), Maia von Malaisé (The Birthday Party, Corpus Playroom; Footlights Presents: Sorry Sorry Sorry, Very Sorry & Comic Sans: Improv, ADC Cambridge) and Imogen Gray (Romeo and Juliet, Cambridge Arts Theatre).
Stephen Bennett comments: "As long as there's a world full of naive and gullible innocents, there will always be calculating 'influencers' lining up to exploit them. It's one of the darker inevitabilities of human interaction."