A Very Expensive Poison by Lucy Prebble

Australian premiere of a new play from the writer of Succession, a thrilling deep-dive into the terrifying world of the new Cold War.

“To turn the truth into justice – which I’m sorry to say are not the same thing – one has to tell the story.”

London, 2006. A brazen political assassination is carried out in broad daylight. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy, drinks green tea laced with radioactive poison.

Subsequent investigations uncover a conspiracy generated from the very heart of the Russian government, and a murder probably approved by President Vladimir Putin.

In this award-winning play, based on the facts as laid out by the investigative journalist Luke Harding in his book of the same name, acclaimed writer Lucy Prebble (Succession, Enron) tells a complex story of espionage and mystery.

On a whirlwind journey from Moscow to Mayfair, it follows Litvinenko as he investigates his own death, and his wife Marina’s quest for justice, in the face of Russian corruption and British vacillation.

With a dazzling mix of vaudeville, thriller, romance and tragedy, the play deep-dives into the terrifying world of the new Cold War.

Winner: 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

“As tender as it is clever, as incensed as it is inventive.” The Times