Person: Chris Davies

Twelfth Night (1999)

What is Twelfth night? Well, it is, traditionally, the last night of the twelve days of Christmas, and falls on either the 5th or 6th of January, depending on whether you start counting on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. A Christian festival, superstition has it that leaving your decorations up after the twelfth night is unlucky, and other customs surrounding the date include singing carols, eating cake and having your house blessed. None of which are remotely connected to Shakespeare’s play of the same name. The source of its naming remains a mystery, though some make tenuous links to the awarding of the title ‘Lord of Misrule’ and the wild abandon or ‘a world turned upside down’ which may possibly have formed part of the festivities on the day during Elizabethan times. However, that’s somewhat overselling the action contained within the play.

What we have is a resourceful heroine, Viola, who having been shipwrecked and washed up on the shores of an unknown land, adopts the masculine persona ‘Cesario’, to enhance her chances of survival. She falls into the employ of Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, who is hopelessly smitten with the Countess Olivia, a woman in mourning for her recently departed brother. Orsino uses Cesario as a go-between to advance his romantic case, but unfortunately Olivia falls for Cesario instead. Worse still, Viola has become infatuated with Orsino, but can’t do anything because she’s pretending to be a man.

Olivia’s household is a place overrun with guests and servants. The steward, Malvolio, is a pompous ass disliked by all. Sir Toby Belch, Olivia’s uncle seems to be a permanent resident, drinking and carousing with his frankly gormless associate Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and flirting with Maria, one of the sharper of Olivia’s housemaids. It is she who formulates a plan, with the two dissolute knights, to take Malvolio down a peg or two by persuading the steward that Olivia secretly loves him.

And into all this walks Sebastian, Viola’s identical twin brother. Thought drowned by his sister, he did in fact survive the shipwreck and is now endlessly confused by people referring to him, and more, as Cesario…

TWC have, somewhat inevitably, been forced to cut back some of the script. Feste, Olivia’s fool or jester, is mainly there to add even more of a comic touch to this already amusing situation. Sadly, what was undoubtedly hilarious to the groundlings in 1602 falls these days on ears that have no understanding of the references being used, and so much of his ‘stand-up routine’ has been excluded. We present ‘Twelfth Night’ as we guess it was intended to be played – an exhilarating and romantic romp, shot through with a vein of wistful lyricism, delivered with exuberance and delight. The alternative title for the play is ‘What you will’, seemingly indicating that Shakespeare was happy to leave the title to the preference of the audience. Whatever you call it, it remains one of his funniest romantic comedies. Enjoy.

The Little Shop Of Horrors

Back in 1960, director Roger Corman, ‘king’ of the low-budget movie, made a horror comedy film called ‘The Passionate People Eater’ on practically no budget, in very little time, using sets left over from a previous movie. Released in that same October under the new title of ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’, it slowly gained a cult following, and over twenty years later, in 1982, a musical version (with some significant changes to the story) opened off-off-Broadway, written by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. It was successful enough to merit a transfer to the off-Broadway Orpheum Theatre in Manhattan’s East Village, and there it ran for five years, winning numerous awards and becoming the highest-grossing production in off-Broadway history. A transfer to Broadway was proposed, but writer Ashman declined, saying it belonged where it was. In much the same way that Mel Brooks’ ‘The Producers’ was first a film, then a stage musical, followed by film of the stage musical, so to did a film version of ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ emerge, in 1986. Starring Rick Moranis as Seymour, this was anything but low-budget, costing US$25 million, with cameos from Steve Martin, Jim Belushi, Bill Murray and John Candy, and the voice of Audrey II being provided by Levi Stubbs, lead singer with 1960s and 70s Motown group, The Four Tops.

Theatre Workshop Coulsdon don’t have US$25 million to throw around, but we do have people with creative skills, buckets of talent, and lots of enthusiasm. We’ll not disappoint.

So, what’s it all about?

Well, down on Skid Row, in the crummy part of town, grumpy store-owner Mushnik runs a seedy, run-down florist’s, with two assistants, Seymour and Audrey. Seymour, orphaned and poor, with only the little money he gets from Mushnik, is secretly in love with pretty, blonde Audrey. However, not only does he lack the confidence to share his feelings, but she’s already got a boyfriend, the arrogant and sadistic Orin Scrivello, a leather-clad, motorcycle-riding dentist. One day, after a sudden eclipse, Seymour discovers a mysterious plant, looking a bit like a Venus Fly-Trap, which he names Audrey II. He tends it carefully, but despite his best ministrations, the plant is clearly ailing. Then, while working with some roses, Seymour pricks his finger on a thorn, and Audrey II eagerly laps up the drops of blood. This is what the mysterious plant thrives on…

Complete with four piece band, TWC’s ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ gives you eighteen singalong numbers as the story charts the misadventures of Seymour, Audrey, and Mushnik and the murderous growth of Audrey II. It’s blooming marvellous!

The Christmas Curse Of Fu Manchu

Created by English author Sax Rohmer back in 1910, Doctor Fu Manchu can rightly lay claim to being one of earliest ‘Super-villains’, a man whose insidious plotting and scheming would, if not stopped by his heroic rival Denis Nayland Smith and his like, have brought down Western civilisation, and ensured the final victory of ‘The Yellow Peril’. Rohmer, whose real name was the somewhat more ordinary Arthur Ward, lived for a while just down the road, in a house called Little Gatton, on Gatton Road, Reigate.

However, he could not have guessed that one day his evil creation would sink to the level that Mark Taylor has devised in his latest pantomime adventure, with the eradication of every Santa Claus on the planet!

Fu Manchu will surely not have it all his own way. Not when faced with the might of Scotland Yard’s finest, Inspector Burke, with assistance from the uniformed (or is that uninformed?) branch in the shape of WPC Shapely, along with PC Manly and Sergeant Duffem. And then there’s Lavinia. Lavinia Smythe-Bottonne to those who know, Dame to you. If you take-away just the one thing about her, it’s that she’ll not stand for any oriental skulduggery. She might sit of course, if the seat is comfortable enough, but obviously not the ones in the hall that you’re sitting on.

(The Director would like to point out that no real Santa Clauses were harmed in the course of making of this pantomime, and that all Santas appear by kind permission of the REAL Father Christmas, who is, as we all know, busily preparing for Christmas in Lapland at this very moment.)

The Recruiting Officer (1998)

Written in 1706 by Irish writer George Farquhar, ‘The Recruiting Officer’ is a comedy set in and around the town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire. As the War of the Spanish Succession rumbles on in Europe, two recruiting officers, the womanising Captain Plume and the effete and cowardly Captain Brazen, attempt to entice the men of the town into the army and the women into their beds. Plume has an advantage here, for on his side is the redoubtable Sergeant Kite, who will use any means, fair or foul, to get men to join up.

Life is complicated by the women in their lives, who are far more independently minded, and smarter, than they can honestly cope with. Plume is promised to Sylvia, the daughter of a local Justice, Balance, but he’s also the father to a bastard born of a local girl, who Sylvia knows about and is caring for. Melinda, Sylvia’s cousin, was the amour of Plume’s friend Worthy, but he refused to marry her and instead proposed that she become his mistress, because she was too poor. Now she’s inherited a fortune, he’s back, but Melinda’s going to have a little fun with Worthy, by playing up to Captain Brazen. And then there’s Lucy, Melinda’s maid, who by subterfuge intends to wed Brazen too.

Hidden motives, trickery, miscommunication and disguise, all go towards making this boisterous romantic comedy laugh out loud funny, and it’s been doing it for over 300 years. It was the first play ever performed in New York City, at the Theatre on Nassau Street, on 11 December, 1732 (by amateurs too!). However, Farquhar didn’t benefit from its success. Heavily in debt and made ill with worry, he died in April 1707, not two months after the debut of his last play, ‘The Beaux Stratagem’.

Zenobia

AD 268. The once mighty Roman Empire now lies in chaos. Corrupted from within, its borders besieged, the Empire could be be overthrown by one man… or one woman. Zenobia, the upstart warrior Queen of Palmyra, seizes her chance to change history forever, and moves her forces into battle with the legions of Aurelian, an Emperor seeing his grip on the Eastern end of the Mediterranean slip. However, Zenobia’s son and heir, Wahballat, has no desire to become King, and spends his time engaged in strange alchemical experiments with Porphyry, a philosophy student with a secret.

A story of love, adventure, ambition and their costs during of the decline of the Roman Empire.

Written by Nick Dear and first performed at The Young Vic in 1995 by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Zenobia is a story of love and adventure, death and betrayal. Seeded heavily with dark humour, this tale is based on historical fact, but its use of modern language makes it easily accessible and is in turn dramatic, moving and funny.

This the first ever amateur production of Zenobia.

Raiders Of The Lost Shark

An unashamed tribute / spoof / homage of the Indiana Jones’ movies that made the 1980s such fun, Richard Lloyd’s comedy adventure draws most heavily on the second of the series, ‘Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom’ (1984). (the first chronologically, being a prequel, set a year before ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’). Although the inevitable Nazi villains are still in the mix (they are so irredeemably bad and easy to dislike), the far Eastern settings, ranging from India to the South China Sea, plus the inclusion of a young Chinese sidekick and a plucky cabaret singer, have clear parallels with the follow-up film.

But if Harrison Ford was only the second choice to play our favourite adventuring archaeologist, behind Tom Selleck, there was only one choice for us. Neil Grew, who had at that time cornered the market (at TWC) in somewhat knowing heroic leading-man characters (He played Robin Hood in 1993, and would go on to play James Bond in 2004). His donning of the trademark (Lucasfilm, that is) battered fedora, leather jacket and bullwhip was pretty obvious casting.

So, beware of the deadly traps, look out for the evil villains and the deliciously duplicitous femme fatales, jump in the seaplane and head due east for excitement and laughter, as Alabama, Frenchy and Hoi-Sin go in search for the fabled Jewel of Munkipore!