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Last Bordello, The

Mitri is a sweet young terrorist who must lose his virginity tonight.  Read more …

But will he even get out of the brothel alive? 

There’s only one bordello left in the middle of a brutal warzone. It’s being bulldozed tomorrow morning. Inside, the atmosphere’s like an X-rated mad hatter’s tea party. The Madam refuses to serve Mitri unless he joins in the surreal parlour games the prostitutes are playing. Reckless with lust, he agrees. They immediately lock the doors…

The Last Bordello is an ingeniously fiendish labyrinth that gets more puzzling and suspenseful with every wrong turn - think Margaret Atwood meets David Lynch. An absurd, sensual and provocative parable about trust and truth, domination and devotion, fact and fiction.


The critical consensus

Despite teetering on the edge of frustration at times, sticking with the play until its ambiguous denouement is worth the head-scratching.

****(*)Matthew Keeley, The Wee Review, 14/02/2018

There is much to enjoy in these multiple stories and puzzles and the profane dialogue, even if the sprawling script, which is dense in references to Genet’s work as well as his activism on behalf of the Palestinians and the Black Panthers, at times disrupts the narrative flow and our capacity to engage.

***(*)(*)Allan Radcliffe, 15/02/2018

Leddy’s own production constructs an unhinged Russian doll of a play.

****(*)Neil Cooper, Coffee-Table Notes, 16/02/2018

The Last Bordello emerges as a show that takes no prisoners – or if it does, only uses the kind of handcuffs that are made to remind us how power, pleasure, oppression and violence remain linked, in our troubled sexual imaginations.

****(*)Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman, 17/02/2018

A singular theatrical experience — but definitely not one for the faint-hearted.

Christine Irvine, Exeunt, 19/02/2018

It may sometimes feel too episodic, but it's a bold game with equal parts beauty and brutality.

****(*)Lorna Irvine, The List, 21/02/2018

The production has a great visual ending, but it rather loses its way before that. Plenty of potential for the future, with avenues like Genet's involvement with the Black Panthers to go down.

Seth Ewin, British Theatre Guide, 22/02/2018

The Last Bordello, with its cabaret closure of vice and virtue, is hopefully not the taste of things to come.

****(*)Dominic Corr, The Wee Review, 22/02/2018

Unlike the avant-garde work it seeks to replicate, Leddy’s piece has very little going on beneath the slightly risque surface.

Mark Brown, Scottish Stage, 24/02/2018


Features about Last Bordello, The

Leddy's Bordello Edinburgh bound

Thom Dibdin, All Edinburgh Theatre, 03/12/2017

The Last Bordello addresses provocative matters

Gareth K Vile, The List, 02/02/2018

David Leddy--The Last Bordello

Neil Cooper, Coffee-Table Notes, 12/02/2018

Where and when?

Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Friday February 10, 2017, until Friday February 17, 2017. More info: www.tron.co.uk

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Wednesday February 21, 2018, until Saturday February 24, 2018. More info: www.traverse.co.uk

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