Far From The Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy adapted by Mark Healy
26 June – 5 July 2014
Thomas Hardy's much loved classic, Far From the Madding Crowd, is brought to life in this new production which fuses vivid story-telling, live folk-song and humour in a dynamic ensemble setting. Bathsheba Everdene finds herself playing mistress in a man's world. She is pursued by three very different would-be lovers: Gabriel Oak, William Boldwood and Sergeant Troy. But are any of them a match for the wilful Bathsheba? A gripping tale of love, tragedy and betrayal.
"Haunting – brooding – smouldering – dynamic drama." Guardian
This production will also be taken to the world famous Minack Theatre in Cornwall from Monday July 21st to Friday July 25th 2014. Join us there if you can!
Moonlight and Magnolias
by Ron Hutchinson
22 - 31 May 2014
"There's your first problem. No Civil War movie ever made a dime. Or ever will."
This is Hollywood at its nuttiest - and it's all true. David O Selznick is about to produce the epic film Gone With The Wind. With the majestic scene of Atlanta burning already in the can, he ditches the screenplay, deciding he needs a new one - in a hurry. So he locks screenwriter Ben Hecht, director Victor Fleming and himself in a room and refuses to unlock it for five days while they work on the new script. Amid shouts and screams of protest, Selznick insists they act out the scenes as they write them. To see these Tinseltown giants playing a pregnant woman, a winsome dandy and a handsome hunk, among others, is very, very funny. The script got written. The film got made. But this episode in its creation is as comical as anything that appeared on the silver screen.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde in a new adaptation by Neil Bartlett
24 April – 3 May 2014
As London slides from one century into the next, a young man is cursed with the uncanny ability to remain both young and beautiful while descending into a life of heartless debauchery. With its glittering dialogue, provocative imagery and radical questioning of sexual and moral freedoms all brought sharply into focus by this brand-new adaptation, Oscar Wilde's infamous parable has lost none of its power to provoke and disturb.
Using Wilde's original words, adaptor Neil Bartlett has brought his trademark theatricality to this black-hearted tale, which was commissioned by, and first produced, at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in the Autumn of 2012.
Ira Levin's Deathtrap
by Ira Levin
13 - 22 March 2014
Sidney Bruhl, a world famous thriller playwright, has been suffering from writers' block for eighteen months. When he receives a script in the post from Clifford Anderson, an unknown playwright, Sidney can see that it is the perfect thriller and he plots with his reluctant wife Myra to pass off the script as his own. When Clifford arrives to discuss his play things take a sinister turn. The series of shocking events that follow will have you gasping in disbelief.
Once Bitten
by Reggie Oliver
6 - 15 February 2014
This cracking adaptation of a French farce from 1875 sees two hapless lawyers intent on spending as much time as possible with their mistresses. In order to do this they have to fabricate cases, avoid domineering mothers-in-law and deal with the yappy lap dog from hell. Add to the mix a lecherous narcoleptic uncle, an embittered maid, a jewel thief and a bone headed Police Commissioner and you have all the ingredients for mayhem as the play reaches its riotous conclusion. A delightful evenings' entertainment is guaranteed.
". . an absolute riot." Daily Telegraph
" . . a happy marriage between ignominious indignity and sheer dramatic elegance." The Times
The Lady In The Van
by Alan Bennett
2 - 11 January 2014
In 1974, Alan Bennett encountered Miss Mary Shepherd, a dotty and very smelly old eccentric living in a van in the street near his home in Camden. He allowed her to park her unroadworthy van in his garden but the intended three months' stay stretched to fifteen years. With social workers, neighbours, dried faeces and a succession of vans to contend with, Alan Bennett recorded the events and subsequently produced a funny and moving dramatization of his memoir. This is the bittersweet comic diary of those years, from one of the nation's best-loved playwrights.
Stepping Out
by Richard Harris
21 - 30 November 2013
Stepping Out is a warm and very funny play about the lives of a group of women (and one man) attending a weekly tap-dance class in a dingy North London church hall. Led by Mavis, their eternally patient instructor, and accompanied by the acerbic pianist Mrs. Fraser, the students (who range from hopeless to competent) strive to master the basics of dance, but the steps and routines are just the background for the real focus of the play - the relationships and interactions of these ten very different people. By their final performance, not only have the class members been transformed into triumphant tappers but they have also overcome the inhibitions, awkwardness and personality conflicts that have kept them out of sync.
"Constantly simmers with laughter . . . . a bright, sparkling show which reaches all the high kicks." London Broadcasting
After The Dance
by Terence Rattigan
17 - 26 October 2013
This is Rattigan's "forgotten" play and it is one with a strange history. Written in 1939, it opened in the West End that year but closed when the Second World War intervened. Its last performance was at the Croydon repertory theatre in 1940 until it was revived as a BBC production in 1994. It concerns a high-living, hard-drinking writer, his wife and their friends, whose lives are lived on a cocktail-hour circuit of gossip and champagne. In the background, acknowledged but never discussed, is the shadow of war. But it is their own small world that tragedy strikes and forces them to re-evaluate their lives and ambitions.
Boeing-Boeing
by Marc Camoletti (Translated by Beverley Cross and Francis Evans)
12 - 21 September 2013
This is French farce par excellence, at one point holding the record for the most performed French play. It ran for seven years in the West End in the1960s and enjoyed a highly successful revival in 2007-08 in London and on Broadway. The plot centres around playboy Bernard's crisis when the three air hostesses he is running as simultaneous fiancées all descend on his Paris apartment at the same time, just when Robert, his old friend from the provinces, is also visiting. Hilarious chaos ensues as the two men strive with increasing desperation to keep the three girls from meeting.