Wood for the Graves, James Corley's darkly comic new play drawn from Federico García Lorca's unfinished Comedia sin título, comes to the Calder Bookshop & Theatre for three performances on 4 and 5 December 2026. Lucy Cohu and Alisha Bailey lead a company of seven, directed by Harry Mackrill.
A new play built on Federico García Lorca's unfinished Comedia sin título arrives on The Cut next month. Wood for the Graves runs at the Calder Bookshop & Theatre on Friday 4 and Saturday 5 December 2026, with tickets at £5. It is a 30-minute piece, and seats are few.
The writer is James Corley, whose The Scene played BFI Flare and was shortlisted for the Iris Prize Best British Short. Harry Mackrill, associate director on the National Theatre's Angels in America, directs. Nisha Oza produces. It is the trio's latest piece together under The Lot, an independent company that works with an inclusive outlook.
Their earlier shows include What It Means at Wilton's Music Hall in 2023, which drew four stars from The Guardian, and World's End at the King's Head Theatre in 2019, named Off West End Production of the Year by Theatre Weekly.
The set-up is a stand-off. A director will not let the curtain rise, while the audience insists on a show. Outside, the city is coming apart. As revolutionaries close in on the building, the line between the play and the street starts to give way.
Corley has moved Lorca's people into present-day London. There is a wealthy theatregoer set on getting his night out, a psychotherapist sure she knows better, an investor trying to trace his missing £20,000, an actress holding on to past glories and a Macbeth troubled by time. The tone mixes satire, absurd comedy and political drama.
Lorca had finished only the first act when fascists murdered him in August 1936, as political unrest grew in Spain. Ninety years on, The Lot pitches the new version at the rise of the far right, and at the question of what theatre owes the world beyond its doors.
The company said: "Theatre is a public act. It brings people together to question the world, remember what might otherwise be forgotten, and imagine how things could be different. This is what drives us at The Lot." It added: "We can't pretend that a play will resolve the conflicts outside its doors. But it can ask us to look at those conflicts differently, and to consider our own place within them."
The cast is Alisha Bailey as the Director, Lucy Cohu as the Actress, Tom Stuart as the Moneyed Homosexual, Jimena Larraguivel as the Psychotherapist, Joshua McCord as Macbeth, Tyler Pringle as the Hot Young Investor and Paksie Vernon as the Assistant Stage Manager. Cohu's credits include Broadchurch, Torchwood and The Queen's Sister, and Bailey's include Silent Witness and Doctor Who. Vernon has appeared in Angels in America and Network, McCord in The Tuckers and War Horse, and Larraguivel in Julius Caesar and A Fight Against.
Set and costumes are by Justin Arienti, lighting by Massimo Neri and sound by Taurean Antoine-Chagar. Lorna Seymour is stage manager.
Performances are at 8pm on the Friday and at 6.30pm and 8pm on the Saturday. The venue is at 51 The Cut, about three minutes' walk from Southwark station.
For more information, visit the official website.
