In summer 2006 Myriad Productions presented the World Premiere of Nobel Prize winning playwright Rabindranath Tagore's most challenging play, Red Oleander.

Tagore himself wished to bring East and West into receptive emotional and intellectual contact and in this new adaptation of Red Oleander which we have drawn on a range of performance traditions both of eastern and western origin. The diverse approach released the synergy of the richly symbolic text in performance.

The production was staged at Camden People's Theatre between the 5th and 23rd July 2006. The theatre has a strong reputation for new, experimental and challenging work so Red Oleander was particularly suited to this dynamic space.

Tagore enjoyed worldwide acclaim as a social, political, religious and aesthetic thinker, innovator and champion of a 'One World' philosophy.  In Red Oleander he gives us a powerful and poignant play describing the conflict between machine and the free human spirit. It is a critique of the ideology of regimentation and exploitation, of technology leading to dehumanization. Love and life assert through death and recreate themselves again - it is play about the suffering and hope of our times.

The play's greatness lies in part in its outspoken critique of industrial civilization. It portrays the inhuman organization of the human race and the suffocation of individuality in a society based on dead, non-renewable resources, symbolized by gold.  It presents the argument for a new kind of civilization which does not suppress individuality but is rather founded on the strength of the human spirit and our capacity to learn from experience.