Funny, provocative and moving, The Liar’s Quartet includes the scripts from Mark Thomas’ most acclaimed comic-political theatre, alongside brand new commentary. Bravo Figaro!, Cuckooed and The Red Shed are all layered with political insight (and insult) and peppered with anecdote.
Each multi-award winning show examines Mark’s obsession with the bonds that bind us, those of family, friends and communities. Beginning with Bravo Figaro!, Mark puts on an opera in his dying father’s living room (with the help of Royal Opera House singers) to explore their relationship. In Cuckooed, he unpicks the betrayal of a friend and a fellow activist who was in fact employed to spy for the UK’s biggest arms company, BAE Systems. And in The Red Shed, Mark returns to his political roots to harness the power of collective memory and celebrate the importance of working-class struggles and narratives in a story he describes as “a topical tale about the miners’ strike.”
Mark Thomas is one of the UK’s most effective and best-known political performers. He has won awards for his stage work including a Special Fringe Award for Outstanding Contribution to Edinburgh and for his human rights work, ranging from the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. He is also a one time Guinness World Record holder for the most demonstrations in one day. He has written and presented six series of the Mark Thomas Comedy Product for Channel 4 and five series of The Manifesto for BBC Radio 4. He is the author of five books on subjects as diverse as the arms trade, Coca-Cola and the Israeli wall in the West Bank. His work has changed the law, kyboshed politicians’ careers and has been performed across the world.
Interested in learning more about Newham Bookshop and some of the people connected with it? We have four lessons for classroom or family use developed from On the Record’s oral history project centered around Newham Bookshop, Writing and Reading Newham. Click here for full details.
We are proud that Newham Bookshop is LoveReading’s Bookshop of the Month. The article features a Q&A with Vivian Archer, which you can read here.
