Productions
"The Vortex" is a disturbing play, focusing on the psychology of its protagonists rather than the cut and thrust of the events in the plot, a serious drama in which its witty dialogue reveals profound observations about the human condition.
We are taking the Canterbury Tales on tour!
We will be at The Farmhouse in Canterbury from Tuesday 8th, Wednesday 9th and Thursday 10th June, 2010, as ‘café theatre’ and the Lounge on the Farm festival from the 9-11 July, 2010.
The production focused on just three of the tales and used the script by Phil Wood and Michael Bogdanov. We used a lot of devising and physical theatre, storytelling techniques in rehearsal.
In this skilful adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s short story On The Western Circuit a chance meeting between Anna Dunsford, a servant girl, and Charles Bradford, a young, aspiring barrister, at the town fair leads to serious consequences for them and others. A second meeting the next day results in the inevitable, unwanted expectation! Charles returns to London. Anna, who thinks herself genuinely in love, can barely read and write, so asks Edith Harnham, her mistress, to carry on a correspondence with the young man on her behalf.
The Brewster family could at least be described as “odd” if not “eccentric”. Led by the two aunts Abby and Martha who are old-fashioned in an ironic sense. They appear to be a quite, conservative elderly couple who value the conventions of the past, attend church regularly and donate toys to the local Christian fund. Their traditional values, however, do not extend to their treatment of the elderly men who come to their home looking for lodging. While their desire to help the men to “find peace” is aligned with their Christian faith, they resort to murder to achieve their goal.
Set over one evening in a pub, the main storyline centres around the Landlord and Landlady on the anniversary of an event that cannot be mentioned. Into the pub come an array of regulars...
A comedy set in Acton, West London, in the early 1980’s, this is the story of three agoraphobic women from different backgrounds, who are managed and "bullied" by Gwenda, herself an ex-sufferer. She and Fliss, a trainee social worker, decide to organise a grand jumble sale in the local church hall with the intention of getting the "girls" out of their houses and into the "real world". Their fears, hopes and disappointments are humorously portrayed by Sue Townsend, author of the popular Adrian Mole books, who has crafted this very entertaining, witty and poignant play
Shakespeare's Classic Comedy is coming to the Gulbenkian Theatre
Set in the West Country during the long summer holidays of 1943, the play centres around a group of seven year old children, all played by adult actors. The children’s games, fighting and relationships reflect their understanding of the adult world and the war around them. The play is a deceptively simple tale, ending in tragedy, and was originally shown on television in 1979.
FALLEN ANGELS, is one of Coward's lesser known and not very often performed plays, but it is still Coward at his inimitable best, gay, debonair, infinitely sophisticated in the in the style that won him his reputation as the most successful purveyor of high comedy in the theatre. It premiered in 1925 with the notorious Tallulah Bankhead and the less notorious Edna Best in the leads. It had a West End revival in 2000 with Felicity Kendal and Frances de La Tour.
If you are a fan of Woody Allen’s early work, or if you just like your heroes insecure, indecisive and inept, which most of us mere mortals are, you have a treat in store coming with our next production of Woody Allen’s comedy, “Play It Again, Sam.” Although the playwright defines his main character early on, and then defines him and defines him, again and again, through a series of fantasy sequences, you will still be fascinated by the clever repartee. There is a story line with a moral dilemma, but it takes a while to get to where the plot matters, but meanwhile – who cares?