Shrunk at The Cock Tavern Theatre - new play by former Almeida press officer Charlotte Eilenberg

Published: 14 May 2010
by JOSH LOEB

CHARLOTTE Eilenberg used to arrange press tickets for theatre critics on a regular basis – and now she is at the mercy of them.

The former press officer at the Almeida Theatre became an acclaimed playwright after leaving the Upper Street playhouse 19 years ago. 

She took home an Olivier Award and a Critics Circle Award for her first play, The Lucky Ones, which was staged at Hampstead Theatre  in 2003. 

NOW the Highbury resident and mother of two will lay herself open to the critics’ wrath (or praise) once again when her new play Shrunk, a two-hander about psychoanalysis, opens at the Cock Tavern Theatre in Kilburn next week. 

“As a press officer I used to sit through lots of rehearsed readings of scripts,” Ms Eilenberg said. “It was always exciting to see if my unpaid judgment that something was good was borne out. 

“Most of the plays were very good, but there were some where I would think ‘I could do better than this’.” 

The writer said she was not expecting her first play to receive such acclaim. 

After writing Shrunk in 2005 she left it in a drawer and forgot about it, but she was encouraged  Sunday Express and Stage critic Mark Shenton to rework it and submit it to the Cock Tavern, which last year won the prestigious Dan Crawford Pub Theatre Award – named after the legendary founder of Upper Street’s King’s Head pub theatre.  

Ms Eilenberg is now working on her third play – set in and around Highbury.

• Shrunk is at The  Cock Tavern Theatre, 125 Kilburn High Road, NW6, from May 18-June 12. For tickets (£15, £12 concs) call the box office on 08444 771 000