Helen Purton – Page 3 – Theatre Workshop Coulsdon

Sherlock Holmes and the Vampyres of London

London 1887. When the mortal remains of a young aristocrat vanish in the dead of night from Brompton Necropolis, Sherlock Holmes is no sooner asked to investigate than a second mystery presents itself – a beautiful young heiress afflicted by unaccountable night terrors; her vitality slipping away.

As these two strange cases resolve themselves into one, Holmes and his steadfast companion, Dr. John Watson, are plunged into a hidden London of grave-robbing grotesques, murderous Szgany gypsies, and demonic possession that obscures a diabolical conspiracy to overthrow the Crown itself.

Theatre Workshop Coulsdon’s thrilling homage to late Victorian gothic pits two of fiction’s most enduring characters against each other. But in the fog-shrouded metropolis where nothing is what it seems, which towering colossus of literary legend will triumph in this savage, epochal battle of wits?

From the author:

Indulging an occasional impulse to put something dark on stage, when ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Vampyres of London’ slid into my head, I thought I’d hit upon an original idea. Ah well. Ten minutes on Google laid bare an entire sub-culture of Holmes vs. Dracula novels, comics and essays. I guess bringing together the two pre-eminent creations of late Victorian fiction was a bit of a no-brainer. The Yin and Yang of the fin-de-siècle imagination – an epic face-off for the ages…

In the red, white and blue corner: Sherlock Holmes – arch-rationalist, buttoned-up, attractively flawed apotheosis of British pluck, doggedness, and all-round brilliance. Set against him, that epitome of lubricious, unchecked carnal desires: Dracula – the screaming antithesis of idealized Victorian manhood. Evil, hypersexualized, and downright foreign. It’s the ultimate Victorian superhero against the ultimate Victorian bogeyman. I mean, why wouldn’t you?

Holmes first appeared in 1887; Dracula 10 years later in 1897. Both characters achieved almost immediate superstar status – a dazzling supernova of global fame which has shown no sign of fading since. They are twin titans of popular culture, endlessly reimagined in movies, television, books, games and comics.

Both Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker achieved immortality of sorts thanks to their creations: a Scotsman and an Irishman giving life to two of the most famous, enduring, and built-upon characters in English fiction.

I have built upon them shamelessly in turn. It was fun bringing them together.

The Wind In The Willows

Since 1908, this classic tale of inquisitive Mole, stolid Ratty, gruff Badger and ‘ever in trouble’ Toad has delighted children of all ages, and most adults too! This stage adaptation by Theatre Workshop Coulsdon follows their adventures from the river bank to the Wild Wood, via the open road to the deepest dungeon, with a thrilling climax at stately Toad Hall. It’s a path strewn with boats, trains, caravans and stolen cars, as our animal heroes overcome adversity and their own natures to emerge victorious. By turns charming and funny, this is a splendid way to while away a English summer’s evening.

1918 – When The Guns Fell Silent

A dramatic exploration of the final year of the Great War and its aftermath.

100 Years ago the Great War entered its final few months. Victory was close. But for who? And at what cost? The world would never be the same again. The social landscape of Britain altered forever.

Using songs, readings, poetry and drama, even humour, Theatre Workshop Coulsdon explores this final year of tears and revolution, and looks beyond to see the impact that this bloody clash of empires made on the century that followed.

And exhibition on the First World War and the fallen soldiers of Coulsdon, curated by local researchers, will accompany the production.

What are you about to see? It’s a good question. It’s not a play, but there is drama. It’s definitely not a comedy, although there is humour. It’s not a lecture either, though we do hope you go away with a better understanding of the events of a century ago. When it was proposed last December, one of the biggest drivers was that this would our last opportunity to explore the Great War and still be relevant to the centenary. We’d run ‘Oh, What A Lovely War’ some years back, and we could have just reprised that, but we didn’t want to cover old ground. And we didn’t just want to look at the war in general. This is the 100th anniversary of 1918, and so we wanted to focus as far as we could on that specific year.

Throughout January, February and yes, even March, we wrote dramas and narratives looking at subjects that the events of 1918 brought to the fore. Topics that interested and excited us. And we hope will interest and excite you too. Over the next couple of hours you will see them, interspersed with the poems of Sassoon, Houseman and others, along with songs either of the time or looking back at it, and a number of the ‘Forgotten Voices’ of soldiers who fought during the War. And yes, an episode from ‘Oh, What A Lovely War’. We follow a rough chronology, from January 1918 through until the modern day, hopefully showing that even now, the echoes of the war to end all wars continue to affect us.

We haven’t managed to cover everything. There’s nothing here, for instance, about the exploits of the fledgling RAF, the first London Blitz or the Spanish Flu epidemic. What we do have is, I think, an attempt to show that the soldiers of both sides were very much the same, in their hopes, expectations and experiences.

It was a war that saw over 19 million deaths, military and civilian, and over 23 million other casualties, ultimately all for no real purpose. Maybe, even 100 years on, it’s not too late to learn the lesson of the futility of war. But as George Ellison, the last British soldier to be killed in the war, and a character you will see in our performance says, ‘if we haven’t learned from this, we’ll never bloody learn…’

Radio Days – The Golden Age of Wireless

This year marks the 70^th anniversary of the launch of the BBC’s Light Programme in 1945, which went on to provide such iconic entertainment throughout the late 1940’s and 50’s. With just the spoken word, some music and a few choice sound effects, the listener could be transported anywhere. All they needed was a little imagination. Adventure tales such as ‘Dick Barton – Special Agent’ and ‘Journey into Space’, comedy from ‘The Goons’ and ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ and serials like ‘The Archers’ attracted millions of listeners.

As a tribute to those classic shows, we’ve put together an evening of light entertainment using the same principles. Some drama, some comedy, all linked together with music from the period. And this format has given us an excellent platform to showcase some of TWC’s newer and/or previously untapped talents. The show has been written or adapted, with two small exceptions, by ourselves. For Joe Wilson and Sean Young it’s the first time they’ll have seen something they’ve written come to life on stage. They’ve directed them too. And it may be their first writing, but it won’t be their last.

So tune in to Theatre Workshop Coulsdon this March, and be transported back to a time when a young Princess Elizabeth was about to become Queen, the British Empire still covered the pages of your school atlas in pink, Dan Dare was the pilot of the future, and Dick Barton was Britain’s finest secret agent. In the post-war years, before the real coming of television, families would gather around the wireless to be informed, educated and above all, entertained. A magic combination of sound, music, voice and a sense of wonder spirited the listening nation to far-off lands, distant times or sometimes just around the corner. Bold adventure and stirring drama rubbed shoulders with surreal comedy. TWC’s ‘Radio Days’ is an affectionate recreation of those golden years of British radio, showcasing a series of short plays evoking the atmosphere of those times, with live music and live sound effects. An evening of laughter, songs and suspense*. Come along, and bring your imagination with you…

*See the Radio Times for details (a pre-1957 edition that is).

‘Slaves of the Sultan’ by Richard Lloyd

‘Wrong Number’ adapted by Paul M Ford from a script by Don Negri

‘The Night Mail’ by W H Auden

‘The Crossroads’ adapted by Richard Lloyd from an original US Radio script

‘Reginald Rare – Rocketeer Extraordinaire! (In the 21st Century)’ by Sean Young

Agatha Christie’s ‘The Lamp’ adapted by Paul M Ford from a 1933 short story

‘Murder at Monford Manor – A Harrison Harrison Mystery’ by Joe Wilson

‘The Weather Forecast’ by Les Barker

The Whispering Wood

Welcome to the Whispering Wood.

In our performance tonight, it’s a clearing where two bands of roving actors meet, and find themselves competing to tell the best tale. In real life, it reflects an age-old English tradition of travelling theatre that we’ve supported for the last twenty years, entertaining people from Coulsdon and beyond with our open air productions. This isn’t the first time we’ve performed folk and fairy-tale based plays, having previously stage ‘Grimm Tales’ in 2003 and ‘More Grimm Tales’ in 2006. But many of tonight’s stories will probably be less familiar to you. Our author, Lucy-Ann Martin, has always been fascinated by folk tales, and she spent a year reading several hundred of them from cultures all over the globe, while travelling the world herself. She then collected her favourites and ended up with more than sixty possible tales to included in a performance. We’ve whittled these down to the final dozen or so stories that we’ll perform for you this evening. They come from all over the planet. Some are many hundreds of years old, some are far more recent, but what is amazing is just how universal the themes are.

Storytelling is a skill and a challenge we relish, and the perfect way (we thought!) to make sure the production was truly innovative was to arrange the telling of the tales as being part of a competition. The Great North Players taking on the Little Sackville Players, each trying their utmost to amuse and entertain you and ultimately gain your favour. A vote for whichever group of players did best will take place at the end of the evening, and you, the audience, will decide the outcome!

First a few thanks though. To Jeannie Lewis, who has for the second year running led the choice and arrangement of all the live music you’ll hear tonight. She and her husband Keith will be playing live at every performance, along with Simeon Dawes and Ryan Newby, just as musicians would have done in times long past. Thanks too for Jenny Moorcroft who designed the programme for us. And finally thanks to you, the audience, for coming and supporting us. Every play is a contract between the audience and the actors, this one a little more explicitly than most, perhaps. And we sincerely hope you enjoy it!

Catch 22

Yossarian had decided to live forever. Or die in the attempt…

Having just survived yet another murderous air raid into occupied France, bombardier Yossarian decides that the enemy isn’t just the Germans. It’s anyone who’s going to get him killed, no matter which side they’re on. If he can just get himself declared insane, he won’t have to fly any more.

Trouble is, he’s the sanest man on the base…

The original novel focused on the lives of a large number of different airmen as they try to survive both the war and the bureaucratic nightmare they find themselves in. Heller’s own stage adaptation brings the focus in more tightly on Yossarian, and as a result a number of popular characters (Orr, Dobbs, Hungry Joe, Sammy Singer and Chief White Halfoat, as examples) don’t make it into this version. However, the key themes of sanity and insanity, the power and absurdity of bureaucracy, the amorality of capitalism and the shifting definition of heroism remain. In the struggle of the central character against an illogical, intractable and unfair system, there are obvious parallels with Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ which TWC presented in the Spring of 2013.

Like John Yossarian, author Joseph Heller was a bombardier, flying B-25 Mitchell bombers based in Italy during World War II. He started to write ‘Catch 22’ in 1953, but it took him eight years to finish it. Published in the US in 1961, it was only a moderate success, but it became a bestseller in the UK and when the paperback version came out the following year it became a phenomenon, and throughout the 1960s its anti-war stance chimed with the rise of a youth culture embittered by the Vietnam war. The book royalties and movie rights (a film with Alan Arkin, Art Garfunkel and Orson Welles was released in 1970) made Heller a millionaire. In later life it was put to him that he’d never written anything better than ‘Catch 22’ subsequently. His response was a simple ‘Who has?’.

Catch-22 specified that the concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. If you were crazy, you could be grounded. All you have to do was ask; but as soon as you did, you would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. You would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if you didn’t, but if you were sane, you had to fly them. If you flew them, you were crazy and didn’t have to; but if you didn’t want to, you were sane and had to.

Twelfth Night – The Panto

We’re sticking to a Shakespearean theme for Christmas, with another original TWC panto, this time based (very loosely) on “Twelfth Night”, but with added slapstick, men dressed as women (dressed as men), “oh no it isn’t”, and “oh yes it is”. It’s a riotously funny pantomime full of unexpected twists and turns. Forget Illyria – a freak storm blows a day-trip to Boulogne way off course. Six months later it’s shipwrecked on the coast of Australia. Auntie Podees and her niece, Sheila, have to find work disguised as men to earn their passage back to Coulsdon. Meanwhile, Lord Sydney Opera-House unsuccessfully pursues the love of his life, Lady Alice-Springs (most beautiful lady in the world – and incidentally, the wealthiest). Can Sheila help? Will the principal boys win the hearts of the principal girls? Will the barbie be a success? Are there any gags about Aussies we haven’t plundered and mercilessly exploited? And will the three witches be too evil to be allowed onstage and exiled forever to make tea and serve mince pies? To find the answers to these and many other mosquitoes (sorry, misquotes) don’t miss Coulsdon’s bonza pantomime, a show so big, it needs two dames…

As You Like It

Ever been young and in love? Shakespeare must have been, because this is a play that understands the sheer giddy joy of love, and the desperate lengths it can drive us to. ‘As You Like It’ is sometimes seen as a counterpoint to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ – love as comedy rather than tragedy. Rosalind is certainly no pale and wan Juliet, but arguably Shakespeare’s most memorable heroine. She has more lines than Juliet, Cleopatra, Beatrice and Portia, any of them. Maybe Shakespeare was just a little in love with his own creation. And who could blame him? She’s the kind of girl you’d want to spend time with, vital; brave; clever; funny and devoted. Oh, a bit of a liability too, of course, but fun to be around.

So, what’s the story? Well, firstly, there are two Dukes. The ‘good’ Duke, called Senior, has been toppled from power by his very own brother, the ‘bad’ Duke, Ferdinand. Senior is then exiled to the nearby Forest of Arden, where he seems to enjoy a carefree life hunting, shooting, fishing and singing. It seems that banishment has been more of a blessing than a curse. Meanwhile his brother’s court is an altogether darker place, full of gossip, scheming and suspicion. Now, each of the Dukes has a daughter, and the two girls are inseparable friends. It’s this that has initially prevented Rosalind from being exiled along with her father, but when Ferdinand finally casts her out, both she and Ferdinand’s daughter Celia run away. Of course, by this point, love has raised its head, and Rosalind has fallen for Orlando, a young man at court being persecuted by his less than pleasant older brother. Thankfully, he’s in love with her too, so when she leaves court for the Forest, he follows. However, Rosalind has now disguised herself a boy, calling herself ‘Ganymede’, and it’s in this form that Orlando finds her and in classic style, doesn’t recognise her. To make things more convoluted, Sylvius the shepherd boy is besotted with Phoebe, who in turn only has eyes for Ganymede!

Themes such as the liberating power of love, sibling rivalry and restitution, the healing force of nature and the simple pleasures of country life are all explored here, despite the plot being frankly ludicrous at times. And there’s a happy ending. Several in fact, as brothers are no longer at odds, lovers have put aside disguise and all is well. Except perhaps for Jaques, who has been melancholy throughout and decides ultimately to go off and be miserable in a monastery. You can’t please everyone.

The text has been trimmed in TWC’s version. Many topical gags that no doubt had them rolling in the groundlings back in 1599 are now impenetrable, and worse, not funny. If you’re a purist, prepare for disappointment, but it’s for the greater good.

There are more songs in ‘As You Like It’ than any other Shakespeare play. We’ve kept them and set them to traditional tunes. One of them, ‘What Shall He have That Killed The Deer’, shares many of its lyrics with ‘Hal-An’Tow’, the traditional Cornish May song. The version here is an amalgam of the two, complete with its reference to defeating the Spanish Armada, which at the time the play was first performed had happened just ten years previously. Many thanks are due to Jeannie Lewis who led the arrangement of all the songs and incidental music, and with the other musicians will be playing live on stage throughout the run of the show.

The Changeling

Licensed on 7 May 1622, The Changeling, by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, is widely seen as one of the best plays of the Jacobean era (the reign of King James I). It’s a violent, baroque tale that manages to be both funny and horrific in its parallel plots.

Beatrice-Joanna – spoilt, rich, beautiful – is blinded by desire for Alsemero, but betrothed to Piracquo. To rid herself of her unwanted fiancé, she enlists Deflores – a disfigured servant who both repels and fascinates her. But Deflores has desires of his own, and Beatrice-Joanna has no idea of the terrible price he will exact.

Meanwhile, in the asylum, a pair of noblemen masquerade as lunatics to have their wicked way with the madhouse-keeper’s young wife. This comic plot holds up a mirror to the main plot, offering an alternative take on the same themes of madness and infatuation.

Who is the changeling of the title? Well superficially, it’s Antonio, one of the madhouse imposters. But the true changeling is Beatrice-Joanna – the young noblewoman who inexplicably turns into an amoral monster. In Middleton and Rowley’s England, people would have had no hesitation in blaming witchcraft for such a sudden, total collapse of character. Including the substitution of an apparently dutiful and virtuous daughter by some evil surrogate or changeling.

The playwrights know better of course. They deftly show how a few fateful steps take an impressionable young mind from the delirium of love to dangerous obsession. But is Beatrice-Joanna deluded, deranged or simply hapless? Does she really make the fatal mistake of engaging a contract killer without understanding the nature of the contract? Is she a spoilt little rich girl, whose game of dare spirals out of control, or a calculating sociopath? This central riddle is one reason why The Changeling remains such a compelling thriller, four centuries after it was first performed.

Middleton and Rowley

Like Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) was a successful jobbing playwright in the flourishing heyday of the early English theatre. He turned out dozens of plays, masques and pageants between 1602 and 1624. He collaborated with, amongst many others, Shakespeare himself, and is known to be responsible for parts of several of Shakespeare’s plays including Macbeth and The Winter’s Tale.

Middleton is generally credited with the tragic main plot of The Changeling, whilst Rowley is thought to be responsible for much of the comic sub-plot. But the hand of each man is also present in sections of the play attributed to the other. Middleton in particular had forged a style very much of his own, turning the conventional ‘aside’ into a parallel reality where characters converse with each other whilst sharing their thoughts with the audience – an intriguing subversion of the theatrical convention of his day.

Middleton was ahead of his time in his writing style too. He was capable of superb verse. But in The Changeling his dialogue is spare, gritty and workaday – more natural and immediate than Shakespeare’s. In fact, the play owes much to changes which coincided with the end of Shakespeare’s career. By the 1620’s, the outdoor Elizabethan playhouses had closed. The Changeling, first staged at The Cockpit in Drury Lane, forms part of a later genre known as ‘Revenge Tragedy’. These plays were tailored for cramped indoor theatres – hot, claustrophobic, and lit only by guttering candles. Small wonder The Changeling seems so gothic, shadowy and stifling.

That said, Middleton and Rowley’s setting of ‘Alicante’ owes very little to Spain, and a great deal to the London the authors knew so well. With the asylum in particular, we are clearly in London’s Bedlam, and being royally entertained – as Londoners were – by madness.

Cinderella’s Puss In Boots

Take the classic story of Cinderella, add the bluff and swagger of Puss in Boots, and you get two much-loved seasonal tales woven into one sparkling festive show.

Yes, we’ve put panto favourites Cinderella and Puss on stage together for the first time, in an irreverent mash-up of two much-loved seasonal tales. That means you get two principal boys for the thigh-slapping price of one, the most deliciously appalling Ugly Sisters ever to grace the stage, and the ultimate in hissable baddies – King Rat, evil lord of the underworld. Plus, of course, Puss-in-Boots at his irresistible, swashbuckling best. Beautiful Cinderella undergoes the usual series of traumas, trials and torments – until her Ab-Fab style fairy godmothers and fashion gurus breeze in to save the day with a haute couture transformation guaranteed to catch a prince’s heart. This is a top-notch Cinderella, with just that little bit extra panto goodness thrown into the mix.

Set in, and under, the fairy-tale land of Cornucopia, ruled by good(ish) King Egbert, the action starts with something evil stirring in the darkness below, and it’s got a tail, whiskers and cheap crown…