Grab your glow sticks and dig out your knock-off Buffalo boots, because Children of the Night is about to drag us all back onto the dancefloor.
This spring, Mad Friday Productions are throwing open the club doors and inviting audiences headfirst into the euphoria, chaos and sweat-soaked spirit of Northern England in the 1990s. Children of the Night tours Doncaster, Salford, Hull and Birmingham before heading south for its London debut at Southwark Playhouse Borough in March – with press night at Cast, Doncaster on Thursday 5 February at 7.15pm. And honestly? It feels right that this one kicks off on home turf.
Shortlisted for both the 2023 Women’s Prize for Playwriting and the 2024 New Diorama Untapped Award, this marks the debut play from writer Danielle Phillips – and what a debut it is.
Set against the electric final pulse of 90s nightlife, post-Thatcher Britain and the UK’s first heterosexual HIV cluster, we meet Lindsay Jenkins: a Donny lass with a fierce thirst for hedonism and a heart that beats in time with the bassline. Inspired by her single dad – an ex-miner and old-school raver – Lindsay tears her way through ‘Yorkshire’s very own Vegas’, spending three long summers navigating sexual health, grief, desire and the supposed ‘lack of ambition’ that so often gets pinned on working-class towns. All of it unfolding on Doncaster’s relentless dancefloor.
This is a play, a poem and a party. A love letter to the working-class cultural pulse of the North that blends kitchen-sink drama with spoken-word dancefloor euphoria. Developed using testimonies from over 30 local Doncaster people, Children of the Night becomes a living, breathing tapestry of personal truth – proudly centring ordinary lives, fierce female friendships, and the often-overlooked importance of nightlife to local communities.
The piece is written and performed by Danielle Phillips (The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare’s Globe; The Upstart Crow, West End; Trying It On, RSC and Royal Court), one half of Mad Friday Productions, alongside co-founder and producer Lauren Yvonne Townsend (Standing at the Sky’s Edge, West End). Direction and dramaturgy come from Kimberley Sykes, with Hannah Sibai leading on set and costume design. Together with lighting designer Jessie Addinall, sound designer and composer Ben McQuigg, movement director Jennifer Kay and a predominantly female creative team, this production shines a bright light on some of the most exciting talent emerging from Northern England right now.
Supported by Arts Council England, Right Up Our Street, Cast and Stage One, Children of the Night isn’t just nostalgia – it’s memory, muscle, grief and joy, all thudding together under club lights at 2am.
Grace says: this one doesn’t ask you to remember the 90s – it dares you to feel them.
Tour listings
Cast, Doncaster
4–14 February 2026
Cast, Waterdale, Doncaster, DN1 3DG
https://www.castindoncaster.com/events/children-of-the-night/
The Lowry, Salford
20–21 February 2026
The Lowry, Pier 8, The Quays, Salford, M50 3AZ
https://thelowry.com/whats-on/children-of-the-night-h87z
Hull Truck Theatre
25–26 February 2026
Hull Truck Theatre, 50 Ferensway, Hull, HU2 8LB
https://www.hulltruck.co.uk/whats-on/drama/children-of-the-night/
Birmingham Rep
2–3 March 2026
Birmingham Rep, Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 2EP
https://www.birmingham-rep.co.uk/whats-on/children-of-the-night/
Southwark Playhouse Borough, London
11 March – 4 April 2026
77–85 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD
https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/children-of-the-night/
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