Sheffield world premiere for new play Run Sister Run

Run Sister Run, written by award-winning playwright Chloe Moss, stars Lucy Ellinson and Helen Lymbery as Connie and Ursula in a story stretching over 40 years.

The play has its world premiere at the Crucible Studio in Sheffield from February 27 to March 21 before moving to the Soho Theatre in London from March 25 to May 2.

The play was commissioned by Charlotte Bennett, the new co-artistic director of theatre company Paines Plough, who also directs the production. The company has worked alongside Sheffield Theatres and the Soho Theatre on the production.

Lucy said: “There’s four members of the cast but the central relationship is of the two sisters who have grown up together in the care system.

“They’ve very much been each other’s world surviving together. As they emerge into adulthood, those lives become very separate and they move further and further away from each other.

“Changes include marriage, addiction and having children of their own.

“It feels like such a small, intimate piece but it’s got this big, epic quality to it. It moves over five decades of a lifetime.

“Chloe’s writing is brilliant. She’s able to absolutely say everything with the most minimal amount of text.”

Lucy said her life has been very different to her character’s but she’s been able to draw on aspects of her relationships with her three sisters and brother.

“The two sisters have had tremendous challenges I haven’t had to face in my upbringing.

“The more I spend time with the characters in the rehearsal room, the more I think that if they were to walk out of the page and walk down to the bus station, they’d be invisible. They are those women who don’t get listened to.

“In the play we get to spend time with them and listen to what things they are thinking and feeling. They are people who are usually silenced and get a chance to speak.”

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Lucy added: “What this piece seems to me to be about is how you can be known very, very deeply by a member of your family.

“We’ve all got people in our lives who know you very well. They know everything you want and need and like and it’s also difficult and suffocating and so you wan to get away from that person.

“It’s the push-me, pull-you of those childhood relationships.”

Lucy said that the play features both comedy and sadness: “There’s moments of really deep grief and sometimes violence and moments where people burst into laughter.”

As a younger actor, Lucy worked a lot at the Crucible in Sheffield with the city theatre company Third Angel.

“I came out of university and was a bit lost and wanted to make theatre. They gave me one of my first jobs and I became a part of the company.

“Sheffield is very special to me in that way. I’ve worked here in different ways and different collaborations and found my feet in theatre terms.”

One of Lucy’s outstanding performances also seen at the Crucible Studio was a solo show, Grounded, where she played a US military drone pilot who is increasingly unable to cope with killing people hundreds of miles away at the press of a button.

These days Lucy moves between working in Britain, Germany, where her partner lives, and the Palestinian El-Hakawati Theatre, based in East Jerusalem.

The company originally set itself up in a burned-out cinema and Lucy said that its energy and determination are inspiring to work with.

Sheffield box office: www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk

London box office: sohotheatre.com