Tagora Thus did the author, N.F. Simpson, describe his play One way pendulum – Tagora’s production for June 2025.
One way pendulum was first produced in London in 1959. The plot defies description, featuring a choir of “speak-your-weight” machines, a reconstruction of the Old Bailey built in a domestic living-room and a cast of marginally believable characters living their preposterous but strangely familiar lives.
Simon Palmer directs this absurd comedy, which draws on a British tradition of logical improbability as exemplified by Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear and the Goons, and which came to influence later acts such as Monty Python and the Goodies.
Performances: 12–15 June, 17 and 18 June 2025. Tickets available here.
An ordinary house, somewhere in England, home to an equally ordinary family: Mum the housewife, who pays a lady to come every week to eat up the scraps; Dad, the DIY enthusiast who is building a replica of the Central Criminal Court in the living room; the daughter obsessed by the inappropriate length of her arms; and the son training a choir composed of speak-your-weight machines. Auntie in her wheel-chair dreams of fantastic travels. Then, all of a sudden, the Court begins to wake up: it’s a trial! But who is on trial, and what will the verdict be?
Une maison moyenne quelque part en Angleterre, domicile d’une famille également moyenne : la mère, ménagère, qui fait venir une dame toutes les semaines pour manger les restes, le Père, bricoleur, qui construit dans le salon une maquette du Tribunal de Grande Instance, la fille obnubilée par la longueur disproportionnée de ses bras et le fiston qui entraîne une chorale composée de pèse-personnes parlants. Tati, quant à elle, rêve dans son fauteuil roulant de voyages fantastiques. Et puis, tout à coup, la Cour commence à s’animer : c’est un procès ! Mais qui est l’auteur présumé des faits, et quelle sera la décision ?
