Aunt Dan And Lemon explores the frightening pathways of influence, the glamour of cruelty and the shadow side of nostalgia.

We all remember a favourite aunty, uncle or grandparent, someone who, in our childhood, told us tales that made our toes curl and stories of wonder. For Lemon, it was Aunt Dan, a brilliant, intoxicating but dangerous woman who shared all the most intimate and daring secrets of her decadent, exotic adult world…

Horrocks, who stars in Aunt Dan And Lemon, is best known for her screen appearances, which in film include The Witches, Life Is Sweet and Little Voice, and on television include The Amazing Mrs Pritchard and Absolutely Fabulous. Recently, she has been a regular face around London’s Theatreland, starring in Absurd Person Singular and The Good Soul Of Szechuan in 2007 and 2008.

Horrocks is directed in Aunt Dan And Lemon by Royal Court Artistic Director Dominic Cooke who recently described playwright Shawn as “a true iconoclast… He is a daringly inventive, experimental playwright who exposes, with painful honesty, the dualities of liberalism in a divided world.” The winner of the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director, for Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Crucible, Cooke has recently directed Now Or Later, The Pain And The Itch and Rhinoceros.

Aunt Dan And Lemon plays as part of the Wallace Shawn season which also includes Clare Higgins starring in The Fever, and Shawn’s first new play in 10 years, Grasses Of A Thousand Colours.

For more about Aunt Dan And Lemon at the Royal Court Jerwod Theatre Downstairs, read the First Night Feature.