• by Philip Ridley
• Music Woodseer Music Project
• Co-production Unicorn Theatre and Half Moon

Fairytaleheart, told the story of two 15-year-olds and how they deal with ruptured families and homelessness by embracing their hopes and fears as they meet by chance in a derelict community centre.

Kirsty’s mother died two years ago, but she is still grieving whilst watching her father announce his engagement to her ‘stepmother’. So she flees her own birthday party and sits alone in the community centre that was once her mother’s ‘kingdom’, where she then meets Gideon: the complete opposite to popular, pretty, pretentious Kirsty. He’s a scruffy boy with ‘rat tails’ for hair.

Together through the medium of storytelling, they enter the magic world of karamazoo and search for the ‘luminous butterfly’. As a result they find it in themselves to see their problems in a new light.

This was the first professional revival of the play written in 1998 – one of a series of one act dramas written for young people by playwright Philip Ridley where the plays, all set in east London, use fairytale  to reveal the traumas of their young protagonists.

This production toured nationally before returning for a 3 week run at the Unicorn Theatre when based at the Arts Theatre in London’s West End.