List of productions 1985-1989
Sadly, we don’t have enough photographs to dedicate single pages to most of these productions, so we present a full list covering the years 1985-1989 on one page.
1989
‘Private Lives’
By Noël Coward
“Elyot and Amanda, once married and now honeymooning with new spouses at the same hotel, meet by chance, reignite the old spark and impulsively elope. After days of being reunited, they again find their fiery romance alternating between passions of love and anger. Their aggrieved spouses appear and a roundelay of affiliations ensues as the women first stick together, then apart, and new partnerships are formed.”
‘Send on the Crowns’
‘Towards Zero’
‘Fish and Frolics’
1988
‘Charley’s Aunt’
By Brandon Thomas
“Jack Chesney loves Kitty Verdun and Charley loves Miss Amy Spettigue. They invite the ladies to meet Charley’s wealthy aunt from Brazil, “where the nuts come from”. Cancelling her visit at the last minute, the millionaire aunt sends the boys into cataclysmic confusion. What do they do now? The problem is solved by drafting their feckless Oxford undergrad pal into a black satin skirt, bloomers and wig. As “Charley’s Aunt”, this charming frump is introduced to the ladies, to Jack’s father and to Stephen Spettigue, Amy’s guardian. When the real aunt turns up, classic comic confusion ensues as Fancourt Babberley, posing as “Charley’s Aunt”, tricks Spettigue into agreeing to the marriage of his ward, the real aunt marries Jack’s father, Jack gets Miss Verdun, and Fanny Babs regains the fortune he lost at gambling as well as the girl he loves.”
‘The Deep Blue Sea’
By Terence Rattigan
“The Deep Blue Sea is a powerful account of lives blighted by love – or the lack of it. The play opens with the failed suicide of Hester Collyer who has deserted her husband for the charms of an ex-fighter pilot.”
‘King Arthur’s Camelot’
1987
‘A Tomb with a View’
By Norman Robbins
“A Tomb With A View is set in as sinister an old library as one is likely to come across presided over by a portrait of a grim faced, mad eyed old man. There, a dusty, lawyer reads a will (involving some millions of pounds) to an equally sinister family one member of which has were wolf tendencies, another wanders around in a toga of Julius Caesar and a third member is a gentle old lady who plants more than seeds in her flower beds. By the third act, there are more corpses than live members left in the cast and what about the sympathetic nurse and the author of romantic novels are they all, or more than, they seem to be? All is revealed as the plot twists and turns to its surprising conclusion.”
‘Suddenly at Home’
By Francis Durbridge
“A man schemes to murder his wealthy wife for the love of another woman the sister, an actress friend or the au pair? Victim and victimized become intertwined in this startling drama.”
‘Jack and the Beanstalk’
1986
‘From Victoria to Elizabeth With Stops Along the Way’
‘Blithe Spirit’
By Noël Coward
“This much-revived classic offers up fussy, cantakerous novelist Charles Condomine, re-married but haunted (literally) by the ghost of his late first wife, the clever and insistent Elvira who is called up by a visiting “happy medium”, one Madame Arcati. As the (worldly and un-) personalities clash, Charles’ current wife Ruth is accidentally killed, “passes over”, joins Elvira and the two “blithe spirits” haunt the hapless Charles into perpetuity.”
‘Pastiche’
‘Ring Round the Moon’
By Jean Anouilh and Christopher Fry
“A fable about twin brothers—Frederic, who is shy and sensitive, and Hugo, who is heartless and aggressive. Frederic is in love with a hussy who is in love with Hugo. To save Frederic from an unhappy marriage, Hugo tries to distract him by bringing to a ball a beautiful dancer who masquerades as a mysterious personage and becomes the triumph of the occasion. She is a susceptible maiden in her own right. She not only breaks up all the cynical romances that have been going on before she arrived, but loses her own heart as well.”
‘Robinson Crusoe’
1985
‘Saloon Bar’
‘Pools Paradise’
By Philip King
“Zany, madcap events transpire at the Reverend Lionel Toop’s vicarage in Merton cum Middlewick. The plot revolves around Lionel’s wife, Penelope, who dabbles in a football pool with the help of their maid, Ida, and Ida’s suitor, the droll Willie Briggs. The most fantastic complications ensue when the triumvirate wins, or when they think they have won more than 20,000 English pounds. Lending richly comic hands are the old maid parishioner, Miss Skillon, and Penelope’s out of this world uncle, The Bishop of Lax. What happens when these assorted characters all get together on one stage has to be seen to be believed.”
‘Parish Event: Seaside Frolics’
‘Cinderella’
