About the Play:

Harvest is a full-length drama by Richard Bean. An epic comedy-drama of feuds and farming over four generations! By 1914 all 82 acres of Kilham Wold Farm near Driffield, East Yorkshire, had been in Harrison hands for 30 years, taken from a local landowner after unwittingly winning a wager. With war now raging around them, brothers William and Albert have to face their heritage and tirelessly fight for their family's survival against a rapidly changing world.

Harvest is a sprawling comic romp that follows four generations of a Yorkshire pig-farming family as they fight to protect their livelihood over the course of the 20th century. At the heart of the story is the life of William Harrison, beginning as a 19 year old farmer eager for adventure in the trenches of the the Western Front during WWI. He returns minus both legs. Undaunted, he resolutely ploughs his own furrow for the next 90 years and ending as a wise-cracking 109 year old whose candle shows no signs of snuffing out. On 14th May 1875 Lord Primrose Agar, drunk as a skunk, wagered one of his tenant farmers, Orlando Harrison, that his border collie pup Jip would outlive the 94 year-old Harrison. The prize would be 82 acres of up and down known as Kilham Wold Farm, near Driffield in East Yorkshire. Thirteen years later, having buried his dog, Agar shook hands with Orlando and conferred on the Harrisons a century of struggle. The Harrisons are battlers and survivors, and no amount of adversity – be it two world wars, the Depression, fatal shootings, armed robbery, attempted rape or commercial failure – can extinguish their intrinsic optimism and pragmatic outlook. Richard Bean, the celebrated writer of One Man, Two Guvnors, has created a theatrical landscape of epic proportions and infused this family saga of life on the land with a wickedly quirky humour and a deep understanding of human nature.

Harvest premiered in 2005 at the Royal Court Theatre in London and was nominated for the 2005 Evening Standard Award for Best Play as well as Best Play in the 2006 Olivier Awards. It won the 2006 Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.

Cast: 4 female, 8 male (alternate casting: 2 female, 4 male with doubling)

What people say:

"...confirms Richard Bean as a writer of beguiling originality." — The Daily Telegraph

"A comic banquet that will sate even the most jaded appetite." — The Age

"A timely revival...it really packs a punch." — The Stage

About the Playwright:

Richard Bean is an English playwright. He was born in East Hull in 1956. After school, he worked in a bread plant before leaving to study Psychology at Loughborough University. He has worked as a psychologist, model and stand-up comedian.