With only a few elements, a table, a sofa, and a window through which comes the night glow, the actors give a very clear and intense performance [...] A play expertly conducted and paced by Pitta, who manages to keep us on a razor edge until the last second.” As well as raising urgent issues about our feelings about other members of society, Kelly also gives an acidic picture of the emotional power games typical of family life. This is a tense and unsettling drama that both scares you rigid and stabs ideas into your brain that then take on a life of their own and run around your mind for a long time after you've left the theatre.

DENNIS KELLY THEATRE: THE RITUAL SLAUGHTER … DENNIS KELLY Playwright THEATRE: 2013 FROM MORNING TIL MIDNIGHT (adapt.) National Theatre 2013 THE RITUAL SLAUGHTER OF GORGE Frankfurt Schauspielhaus, In September 2011 Kelly married Neapolitan actress Monica Nappo. They had met five years earlier when Nappo was appearing in an Italian premiere of one of Kelly's plays. [6] They separated in 2016 and divorced in 2017. In May 2022 he married Producer Katie Swinden, the couple have one daughter together. Horgan, Sharon (March 2015). "Sharon Horgan talks to Dennis Kelly". Chain Reaction. Series 10. BBC. BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 24 March 2021. In 2009, his play Orphans was staged at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre before transferring to the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. [ citation needed] 2010s [ edit ]Kelly has dived into various dark themes in his work over the years, with preoccupations including the dangers of isolationism, resource scarcity, suspicion of outsiders due to the war on terror and grief. He has discussed the freedom he experiences as a writer to write truthfully about the things people think about but rarely admits to people around them. Top Five Dennis Kelly Plays

Orphans is a 2009 play by London playwright Dennis Kelly, an exploration of violence in urban areas. Kelly said “I always want my plays to have tension; whether the audience hates it or loves it is up to them, but I never want them to be bored.” [1] Synopsis [ edit ] Having policed sink estates in South London myself, I am only too aware of the plight of those good ordinary people who have to live with the monsters outside their front door and thought that certain parts of the play echoed my ideas of their needs and aspirations. Well done to the cast and director on a powerful bar show. Bartleet, Larry (16 June 2015). "10 TV shows cancelled before their time that Netflix should resurrect". NME . Retrieved 16 March 2021.Billington, Michael (15 February 2018). "Girls and Boys review – gut-wrenching Carey Mulligan charts a marriage's end". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 February 2022. True Love, Sums and Christmas (2010): monologues performed as part of The Children's Monologues one-off event at the Old Vic Theatre

Helen and her husband Danny are celebrating the news that Helen is newly pregnant with their second child with a quiet night in, but it is interrupted by Helen's brother Liam, who arrives covered in blood and claiming to have found a young man injured on the street. When Liam's recollection of the event begins to change under questioning, suspicions are aroused followed by increasing concern that he may have been more involved than first thought. Rose Bernd (2005): a translation, original play by Gerhart Hauptmann, premiered at the Arcola Theatre Born in North London in 1970, Kelly grew up in an Irish Catholic family. He left school at age 16 and worked at Sainsbury’s supermarkets. A friend of his convinced him to join a local youth theatre group, the Barnet Drama Centre. Later he decided to study theatre formally and graduated from Goldsmiths College at the University of London with First Class Honours in Drama and Theatre Arts. Murder at Gobbler's Wood (2007): written with Enda Walsh and Robin French, premiered at the Latitude Festival at Henham Park (Unpublished)

With his new play, <em>Orphans</em>, director Dennis Kelly takes an unusual look at random violence which fans of BBC3's <em>Pulling</em> might find odd. But as he tells Lyle Brennan, it's as much about keeping himself on his toes as it is keeping his audience on theirs

Snow, Georgia (11 November 2015). "Matilda writers Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly awarded honorary degrees from Mountview". The Stage. Archived from the original on 3 August 2017. As a result, with Orphans set in an urban environment fraught with random violence, it’s difficult not to associate it with the past year’s reported surge in knife crime. But Kelly insists his inspiration is more personal: “Your mind will tell you what’s a cool thing to write about or what other people think you should write about but actually you have to avoid that and find out what you want to write about.” He wrote After the End in 2005. It was produced by Paines Plough in his first out of London production at the Traverse, though it later came to the Bush Theatre before going on a tour of the UK and internationally in 2006. [ citation needed] Billed as a psychological thriller (though Kelly is reluctant to accept this label), the play begins with a simple, yet intriguingly nightmarish scenario: the peaceful, urban life led by Danny and his pregnant wife, Helen, is thrown into turmoil when Helen’s brother arrives, drenched in blood. For those unfamiliar with Kelly’s work, Orphans may come as a surprisingly sinister turn from a writer who recently found fame through his work on the charmingly depraved, Bafta-nominated—yet abruptly axed— Pulling, which he co-wrote with the sitcom’s star, Sharon Horgan. In his return to theatre, Kelly works his way through four acts of brutality and volatile family ties, propelled by an aptitude for almost cinematic suspense.