Special one-off performance of These Hills Are Ours comes to Greenwich Theatre

Remember Chumbawamba? They were the band behind Tubthumping, the anthemic song that, according to former member Boff Whalley in The Guardian, is “about the resilience of ordinary people”.

The song sold nearly a million copies in the UK, and the official video has been seen more than 50 million times on YouTube.

So where do you go from there?

The band has had various members over the years, with success stories like Alice Nutter, who went on to write for the BBC and others, and Dunstan Bruce, who has worked in film-making, directing the award-nominated documentary This Band Is So Gorgeous, about punk band Sham 69.

Meanwhile, Whalley is heading right here to Greenwich this December with These Hills Are Ours, his first theatre piece with award-winning writer and performer Daniel Bye.

The show is inspired by, or a response to, or created as a result of, a series of runs that the two performers completed.

Finding themselves in the heart of a city, they would run to the top of whatever peak overlooked that city, and the show is the story of what they found out on those journeys. But this is not a travelogue, not a sharing of holiday snapshots.

The show is about escape, a celebration of the wilderness and our freedom to roam. In story and in song, it is about escaping the city, escaping your past, escaping the restrictions of upbringing or class or politics.

It is about the relationship between city and country, between wild and controlled, about land ownership, about why we’re drawn to wild places – and about what we’re really running from.

The prospect of a collaboration between Bye and Whalley is mouth-watering.

Daniel Bye has created unforgettable work in the past including The Price Of Everything, about what we value and how we attribute that value, and How To Occupy An Oil-Rig about protest and how to handle a desire for change.

He has been described by The Stage newspaper as “One of the most astute and stylish contemporary theatre-makers around” and by The Times as “the future of British theatre”.

As well as his work with Chumbawamba, influenced by The Sex Pistols and The Clash and driven by powerful political convictions, Whalley has more recently become a part of the Commoners Choir and is now working on an opera with Welsh National Opera and members of Cardiff’s refugee and asylum community.

Bringing these two artists together, These Hills Are Ours comes to Greenwich Theatre on December 6 for one special performance.

It promises to be their most personal work yet – and will surely be an evening of theatre that’s not to be missed.

 

Pictured: Daniel Bye and Boff Whalley Picture: Daniel Bye