The Marriage of Bette and Boo (2005)
Matt
GBS Theatre
RADA
June 1-11, 2005
The Marriage of Bette and Boo is considered by many to be [Christopher] Durang’s best play to date. Admittedly biographical, the play is based on his parents’ marriage. Though it is a funny play told in 33 (mostly) quick scenes, the play is known for the mixture of seriousness and comedy in its tone. (Durang)
The Fool (2005)
John Clare
Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre, RADA
March 17- 26, 2005
This is an insight into rural life as the eighteenth became the nineteenth century, giving a detailed picture of the lives of country people and the divisions of class and perception which gave rise to two very different cultures. The play poses important questions about the nature of art in the individual life of an extraordinary artist.
Clare's struggle to express his vision and the conflicts in his personal life which took him to the edge of madness, make for an enthralling play by a major contemporary writer. (Archive.org)
A Chorus of Disapproval (2005)
Ted Washbrook
GBS Theatre
RADA
February 9-19, 2005
This is one of Alan Ayckbourn's funniest and best loved comedies. It centres on a diffident widower who attempts to escape from his loneliness by joining a local amateur light operatic society. After his audition he is cast in a small role in the Beggars Opera but he eventually triumphs as the lead MacHeath and becomes the centre of attention in more ways than one.
His attempts to integrate into the Company lead to many side splitting misunderstandings, his impact on the society is devastating, but... the show must go on (SDG)
The Rivals
Faulkland
Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre
RADA
Nov. 25-Dec. 4, 2004
Restoration comedy about social morals and hypocrisy. Mrs Malaprop, the infamous Queen of the Dictionary, is horrified. Her niece, the rich and beautiful Lydia Languish, is in love and wants to marry the penniless Ensign Beverley. Outraged, Mrs Malaprop demands that Lydia marry the eligible and dashing Captain Absolute who has arrived in Bath to court her. Little do they both know that the Ensign and the Captain are one and the same man...What follows is a delightful tangle of romance, fury and deception, making The Rivals one of the funniest and best loved comedies in the English language. UKTW
The Knight of the Burning Pestle
Humphrey
Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre
RADA
October 21-30, 2004
Mrs. Herring the grocer s wife may not know much about ‘the art of theatre , but she knows what she likes - and she insists upon getting it. She doesn t want to see lewdness, violence, incest and murder - she can get all that at home! She likes valiant knights and heroic quests and damsels in distress and romantic love stories and happy endings - and most of all she likes her husband's apprentice, Ralph...Beaumont and Fletcher were the Two Ronnies of Jacobean theatre and, in their day, more popular and more performed than Shakespeare. In this, the most irreverent of their many collaborations, they joyfully throw together a rich cast of their finest comic creations for an evening of sheer fun. UKTW
Outside In
Richie
GBS Theatre
RADA
July 15-17, 2004
This production is aimed at Years 8-10 in Secondary Schools. It is a series of dramatic extracts taken from literature, both classical and modern. It is a colourful, witty and poignant look at what it means to be an outsider looking in, and how that can be both hilarious and hurtful. The range of source material is diverse, fusing well-known classics with contemporary realism. Prejudice, bullying and family relationships are explored in an extraordinary visual collage intended to inspire and provoke discussion. (Archive.org)
Love for Love
Scandal
In a world of intrigue, duplicity and gossip is it possible to find true love? Man about town, Valentine Legend, is in love with the wealthy heiress, Angelica, but there's a problem. Having spent all his money on extravagant living he is now being disinherited by his curmudgeonly father, Sir Sampson, who wants him to sign over his inheritance to his younger brother Ben, a sailor who is also looking for love. Meanwhile, sisters Mrs Frail and Mrs Foresight are busy in town looking for men to give them what their husbands cannot. In the midst of these various intrigues Angelica strives to make true love win through. One of the most popular plays of its day, Love For Love has all the hallmarks of great Restoration Comedy. Theatrical wit and farce abound in this tale of mistaken identities, disguise, deception, lust and love. UKTW
Author William Congreve
Women Beware Women
Leantio
A story of the corruption of innocence. Thee young people are seduced by the lies, lust and treachery of the sophisticated players who thrive in the glamorous court of the Duke of Florence. Written in 1623 UKTW
Author Thomas Middleton
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Sheet
Who do you call when you need protection? Arturo Ui. But who do you call when you need protection from Arturo Ui? Chicago, 1930s: the “Cauliflower Trust” is making a move to conquer the vegetable trade when petty criminal Arturo Ui concocts his protection racket. After a reign of terror, Ui emerges as an undisputed mob boss and king of the vegetable monopoly. Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is much more than a simple gangland comedy, however. Written in the early 1940s, the play is also a thinly veiled allegory of the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, told through the borrowed plot of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Not least, it is a cautionary tale of unchecked political ambition and power – a reminder for our own times that our own Arturo Ui’s are resistible. Cedu
Author Bertolt Brecht.
Le Morte D'Arthur
Canterbury
It tells the famous legend of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, the knights of the Round Table and their quest for the mystical Holy Grail. Malory worked from a late-14th-century French poem, adding some material from other sources, to produce his English prose translation.
In 21 books, the story covers the founding of Arthur’s kingdom and the institution of the Round Table; the various adventures of individual knights; the quest for the Holy Grail; the death of Arthur and the fall of his kingdom. BL
King Henry V
Exeter / Fluellen / King Henry V
Young and brash King Henry V of England takes his nation to war with France. As he leads his troops into combat and experiences the true costs of war firsthand, Henry discovers that the challenges of leadership are greater than he ever imagined. From Henry’s rousing battle speeches to his quieter moments courting the Princess of France, Shakespeare explores what makes a man a king … and a king a man.
“I began to find the kernel of a really interesting psychological story, especially if the distance between how this man acts publicly and how he feels privately is vast; if this is a man who in public is inspiring, direct, sure of himself and sure of what his country needs to be doing, and then in private is uncertain about the wisdom of war, exhausted, lonely, anxious and torn apart by the things he must do.”
–David Muse ST
Wild Honey
Osip / Dr. Triletzsky
Village schoolmaster Platonov has it all: wit, intelligence, a comfortable and respectable life in provincial Russia, and the attentions of four beautiful women - one of whom is his devoted wife… As summer arrives and the seasonal festivities commence, the rapidly intensifying heat makes everyone giddy with sunlight, vodka – and passion. HampsteadTheatre
Michael Frayn’s comedy of errors, drawn from Chekhov’s untitled – and posthumously discovered - early play, is a tale of nineteenth century Russian life replete with classic misunderstandings, irrepressible desires and nostalgia for a vanishing world.