Person: Luke Argles

The Arabian Nights

For our inspiration, ‘The Arabian Nights’ draws on the 1001 tales supposedly told by Shaharazad (or Scheherazade). King Shahryar, having suffered at the hands of an unfaithful wife, has become bitter and vengeful, undertaking to marry every day, but execute each wife as the next day dawns to prevent their infidelity. Shaharazad, the clever daughter of the court vizier, volunteers to become his wife, to try and prevent the needless bloodshed. Every night she tells Shahryar a story that enthralls him, but deliberately leaves it unfinished come the sunrise, and so the King stays her execution. She does this again and again, for 1001 nights, by which point he renounces his violent ways and spares her life permanently.

In reality, the stories, which are many but nowhere near 1001, are taken from sources across the Islamic world. From Moorish Spain to the borders of China, across the Middle East, reaching as far south as sub-Saharan Africa and north to the Balkans and the Caucasus mountains. The fullest version of the 1001 tales was compiled, translated and edited by the eminent Victorian explorer, Sir Richard Burton, who had published a massive 16 volume edition in 1885. However, it remains only one of a dozen or so major retellings written across the 19th and 20th centuries.

Most of the stories are simple folk tales, a number sharing many similarities with folk tales from other cultures. Two of the tales (strangely enough, two of the most famous, ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’) were almost certainly shoehorned into the collection at a late stage, bearing little resemblance to the story structure of the rest and differing in other aspects too.

For our production, we kept part of Shaharazad’s tale to frame the other tales we wanted to tell, a mere six against 800 or so we had to choose from. We’ve tried to cover a range, from the profound to the absurd, the sinister and the scary to the comic and just a little bit naughty. All human (and some non-human) life is here. Enjoy.

The tales are;

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

The Talking Head

The Simpleton and the Two Sharpers

The Little Hunchback

The Lady and Her Four Suitors

The Strange Tale of Sidi Nu’uman

 

The Taming of The Shrew

‘The Taming of the Shrew’ was one of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies, but has in recent years become considered by some to be controversial, mainly in its depiction of the cruel treatment handed out to the ostensible heroine, Katherina, by the her suitor and eventual husband, Petruchio. However, this was never intended to be a hard and fast primer on how men should behave with women, especially when you wish to marry them!

There are two main storylines at play here, both set around the wooing of a woman by a suitor, or in Bianca’s case, a number of suitors. Katherina is shown as being wilful, haughty, disobedient even, when in fact she is merely displaying an independence of thought and spirit. Her father, Baptista, being of an older generation, has no understanding of this, and though he truly loves her and wishes to protect her, he sees the biggest barrier to her ongoing happiness as herself and her attitude. Bianca, the younger daughter, plays a very different game. Her supplicatory attitude to her father’s ways earns his favour, and is indulged. Her gentler ways, and good looks, also earn her the attention of the pragmatic Hortensio and the aging and foolish Gremio, both vying for her hand, and undoubtedly her dowry. Baptista is a wealthy man. Into this come two new protagonists. Petruchio of Verona appears to see Katherina as a challenge, and becomes seemingly determined to ‘break her’ as you would a wild horse. Lucentio, from a wealthy family in Pisa, has come to Padua to study but falls for Bianca and so cooks up a scheme to woo her by disguising himself as a Latin tutor. The scene is therefore set for some absurd behaviour and comedic antics set around confused identities such as Shakespeare delighted in.

As the play comes to an end, each of the two women reach a decision over their futures and they are very different, but also very personal to them as individuals. In some ways, neither woman has been portraying themselves honestly, that is, true to their natures, before this point. And more obviously, neither Petruchio or Lucentio have been themselves either. Each couple will now face a future with the facades stripped away. Whether those relationships will thrive, we can only guess at.

This was Lucy-Ann Martin’s first production in the director’s chair. All the more impressive given that at the time she was just 16. And though she was supported by both her family and the group in the endeavour, as you’d expect, it remains a remarkable achievement.

Dr Ho

It’s Bond. James Bond. But you’ve never seen him like this.

Britain’s finest, and most well-known, spy has encountered threats over the years that have endangered his life, his country and even the world, but now someone is placing Christmas itself in peril! Plucked from the night skies, Santa Claus has been kidnapped and here’s only one man who can possibly find him in time before the world’s children open their eyes on Christmas morning, and find… nothing! But will a fondness for fast cars, faster women, a particular martini and a licence to kill be enough?

Mark Taylor draws on 007’s significant rogue gallery to populate this panto with vile villains galore and their perfectly hissable henchmen. Dr Ho. Ernst Stavro Blowave. Bob-a-Job. Rosa Widdecombe. Jaws. (‘What’s Jaws?’ ‘Thank you, mine’s a pint.’) However, this time around, Bond isn’t working solo. Enter Ada Bagwash, MI5’s cleaner. Is she really what she appears? Or is she a deep-cover intelligence operative with the tactical nous of a bagful of generals and the combat potential of a Gorilla with a machine gun? Sad to say, she’s just a cleaner, but what she lacks in intelligence… let’s just leave it there. Throw in a casino, an atomic reactor and a couple of women with unlikely and sexually provocative names, not to mention the all-singing Bondettes and their backing band, and you have a pantomime to live and let die for.

Mission briefing over, report to Q Branch to pick up your tickets now.

Inspector Drake and The Time Machine

The professor’s dead body is found floating in the study, his daughter has vanished, and everything points to the mysterious time machine sitting innocently in one corner. Can Inspector Drake, ably hampered by Sergeant Plod, solve this crime that defies logical explanation?

In the course of the investigation, and by a freak of science, our heroes are hurtled into the year 2950, and onto the deck of an alien spaceship. Plod becomes momentarily super intelligent, and tries to make love to a robot, while Drake uncovers a fiendish plot to take over the world and falls into the groping hands of the sex-starved High Priestess of Zircon. The Met’s new guidelines for policing don’t cover this!

The one-liners fly fast and furious in this absurd comedy from the prolific pen of David Tristram.

Peter And The Wolf! – A Pantomime of Old Russia

A pantomime drawing on all sorts of classic old Russian themes? Coming right up, comrade!

The villain of the piece is Grand Duchess Irina Bogovsky, whose personal vanity and quest for immortality has led her down a dark path, as only by sacrificing young peasant girls will she stave off her personal march of time. Against her is set the heroic, young, thigh-slapping principal girl, Pyotyr Pyotrovich, who must rescue her true love from the Duchess’s evil machinations.

Does Pyotyr stand a chance against the devilish Irina and her fiendish Cossack ally Ivan and his men?

Oh no, he doesn’t!

Oh yes, he does!

With Grandmother Masha by his side, and help from various over-sized and over-furry animals, Pyotr will trawl through an entertainingly curated collection of recognisable Russian folklore, from mad monks to Firebirds, rescue Dasha and free the motherland. With songs too!

That’s Theatre Workshop for you, always giving you plenty of bang for your rouble.

The Wind in the Willows

For our eleventh summer production, staged in the open air at The Woodman, we’ve picked a classic of children’s literature ‘The Wind in the Willows’, based on the 1908 book by Kenneth Grahame.

There’s not a great deal one can say about ‘The Wind in the Willows’. Almost everybody is familiar with the adventures of Toad, Ratty. Mole, Badger and co., either because they’ve read the book, or at least they think they have. It’s certainly amongst the most widely loved of books – a rural riverbank idyll of friendship and innocence which seems to strike some peculiarly English sentimental chord.

Maybe it’s the little furry animals. Perhaps, viewed through the prism of history, the modest, meandering adventures of Rat and Mole, set as they are in an evocative pastoral England where good manners and tranquillity are only occasionally disturbed by the vainglorious antics of a certain ‘Nouveau Riche’ amphibian, genuinely do call to mind an time of lost innocence and comfortably parochial concerns. An England before the cataclysm of The Great War, and all the horrors of the industrialised, globalised conflicts that have occurred since.

However, ‘The Wind in the Willows’ doesn’t simply hark back to a bygone age. It presages the uncomfortable shape of things to come as Grahame saw them in 1908 – the ‘menace’ of the motor car for instance, and the upheaval of the deferential norms of polite society, where Wild Wooders and other assorted ‘lower orders’ simply don’t seem to know their place any more, and are starting, as Ratty says, ‘to break out’.

Much of the appeal lies in the story’s great comic set pieces, its sympathetic characters and larger than life caricatures such as the irrepressible Toad. Appalling amoral and utterly incorrigible, he’s become a firm favourite on stage for much of the twentieth century, mostly due to A.A. Milne’s ‘Toad of Toad Hall’, the first and most enduring of the many adaptations that the story has undergone.

That said, we’re actually using the more recent (1990) adaptation by Alan Bennett, with a few choice embellishments of our own. Some critics have said that Bennett’s version is somehow truer to the book than Milne’s classic, but if you watch our show closely, it’s clear that Bennett’s voice can be heard intermixed with that of Grahame’s. Regardless, as Mr Toad so succinctly put it, ‘Poop Poop!’.

Return To The Forbidden Planet

Since its debut in an inflatable tent on Blackheath back in May 1983, this strange, hybrid ‘juke-box’ musical, ‘Return to the Forbidden Planet’, has acquired something of a cult following, similar in some ways to its far raunchier predecessor ‘The Rocky Horror Show’. The Bubble Theatre Company used a cast of ten who acted, sang and played all the instruments. For a number of reasons, TWC have decided to spread the workload a bit further.

Writer and director Bob Carlton took as his inspiration the 1956 science fiction movie ‘Forbidden Planet’ (Starring Leslie Neilsen as John J Adams, commander of the United Planets starship ‘C-57D’), itself drawn on loosely on William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’. He’s then plundered several of the Bard’s works for dialogue, and then added a score composed of numerous songs from the 1950s and 1960s, such as ‘Wipe Out’, ‘Great Balls of Fire’, ‘Shakin’ All Over’, ‘Good Vibrations’, ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ and ‘Born to be Wild’. It probably shouldn’t work. The story only just about makes sense. But is it fun? Heck, yeah!

So join Captain Tempest, commander of the starship ‘Albatross’, and his crew, on a routine scientific survey flight across the stars that becomes anything but routine. A meteor shower drives the ship down toward the planet D’Illyria, where they encounter the enigmatic Doctor Prospero and his daughter Miranda, along with Ariel the robot. They have been marooned on the planet for years, having been sent into space by Prospero’s scheming wife Gloria, but now they are rescued, and everything will be fine. Won’t it?

Warning. As passengers on the ‘Albatross’, you will be required, when the order is given, to undertake the Reverse Polarity manoeuvre to ensure the ongoing safety of the ship.

Step 1 Put both your hands in the air

Step 2 Place your hands on the top of your head

Step 3 Press, using a downward motion, several times

Step 4 On the command ‘Polarity Reverse!’, equalise the external equilibrium by quickly raising both hands and arms and exhaling thus – ‘Phewwwww!!’

The Adventures Of Tom Jones

Back in 1746, when Henry Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’ was first published, there was an uproar amongst polite society. Why? Because Fielding’s biting satire painted a very unlovely picture indeed. Polite society was, in fact, anything but! Fielding’s masterwork wasn’t just a hatchet-job though. It was brilliantly funny, a rollicking comedy tale told over two hundred chapters (!), intricately plotted and with probably as many characters. There was depth too, with Fielding using the smokescreen of humour to discourse long and loud on such subjects as politics, philosophy, morality and religion.

All of which may be wonderful for a quiet Sunday afternoon’s reading, but for a dramatic evening’s entertainment, it just won’t do. What we want, nay, what we need, is a full-blown eighteenth century romp, full of colourful costumes and no less colourful characters, so with apologies to Mr Fielding, he’s been rather hijacked.

Into the heady mix have been brought characters and situations from other playwrights, whose swagger matches the feel and atmosphere of the base material. George Farqhuar provides the landlord Boniface and the roguish highwayman Gibbett for instance, both characters and situation taken from ‘The Beaux Stratagem’ (with just a dash of MacHeath from John Gay’s ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ of 1728). The recruiting sergeant’s opening speech is taken from Farqhuar’s ‘The Recruiting Officer’, and if Farqhuar’s highwayman is infinitely better character than Fielding’s own take, then the two recruiting sergeants are strangely similar. The rascally recruiters may possibly have a been a familiar stereotype and both authors took delight in playing with it.

So, literary fidelity you don’t get. A number of Fielding’s characters have been merged, others ejected wholly. What you do get is an evocative venture into eighteenth century England, following Tom Jones as he looks to find his fortune, leaving his numerous indiscretions behind him and with bold new exploits tantalisingly awaiting just over the next sun-lit hill. Enjoy.

The Mummy – The Panto

A brand-new and original pantomime from the fevered imagination of Mark Taylor, who wrote the script, directed the show and the music as well as played piano and keyboards. That’s dedication. Or possibly he’s just a control freak. Either way, this unique tale follows the adventures of a daring expedition into Egypt, in search of the tomb of Imhotep, lost to history thousands of years ago. Professor Pottering and Rose Garden not only have the threat of the evil Ardet Bey to contend with, and the curse that surrounds the long-dead ancient Egyptian ruler, but Mrs Beryl Pie’n’mash, foisted upon them by the needs of a pantomime to contain at least one man dressed as a woman with no dress sense and make-up applied in the dark with a trowel. There is nothing like this Dame.

Brokers men Muk-Itup and Kok-itup are on hand to help carry out Ardet Bey’s malicious wishes, but incompetently, of course, and there’s a four piece band to accompany a dozen songs all hand-picked and adapted to amuse and entertain.

All in all, a trip to the sun-scorched desert by the banks of the Nile with Theatre Workshop Coulsdon is a great way to spend a cold December evening.

Hamlet

Once upon a time there lived a Prince Amleth, whose father, the King of Jutland, was killed by his own brother, the prince’s uncle… 

This was a story told by the wonderfully named Saxo Grammaticus, a thirteenth century Danish historian. The tale was picked up in the mid-1500s by Matteo Bandello, an Italian writer of short stories, and adapted to his needs, and then the French writer and translator, Francois de Belleforest, took Bandello’s version and did much the same in 1570. He expanded the original story in his version and introduced the main character’s famous melancholia, and it’s almost certain that Shakespeare took his inspiration for Hamlet from this version, translated into English. (‘Cymbeline’, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet’ almost certainly trace their roots in much the same way, as does John Webster’s ‘The Duchess of Malfi’.). 

Shakespeare’s play was published in 1601, though it had been in existence, and performed, before then. It’s even thought that a early version of it existed as far back as 1589, written by either playwright Thomas Kyd or Shakespeare himself, but the script has been lost. It’s thought that the ‘Ghost’ made its debut in this version, but to date, that remains unproven.

Our script is not as Shakespeare wrote it. It’s simply far too long for our needs. Branagh’s film adaptation (1996) retained every word and ran for over four hours and a standard stage version will easily run to three and a half. In our version we’ve edited the text significantly, taking out fully a third of what was there. However, we’ve not been so foolish as to endanger the story proper. The key plot components, important speeches and oh, so quotable lines are all there. Gone are many of the political aspects, and (purists look away now) some of the flights of poetic fancy. We believe we’ve struck the proper balance here between art and comfort. We’ll leave the decision as to whether we called it right down to you.

‘Hamlet’ is part of the English revenge play tradition. A crime or wrong-doing has taken place and the drama proceeds from the protagonist/s attempting to seek some form of justice, either by simply disclosing the offence or exacting revenge upon the perpetrator. The history of revenge plays goes back at least as far as Aeschylus and his Oresteian trilogy in 500BC, which were translated into Latin by Seneca half a millennia later and from Latin into English over a thousand years after that. These then provided the model from which English playwrights would craft their own stories. Thomas Kyd’s ‘The Spanish Tragedie’ (1588), John Marston’s ‘Antonio’s Revenge’ (1599), Cyril Tourneur’s ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607) are classics of their kind. Of all of them, however, ‘Hamlet’ remains the exemplar, for its depth, its questioning of the human condition, its ability, centuries on, to make itself so clearly understood. 

A final note. In Old Norse, in which the original tale was told, the name ‘Amleth’ meant ‘Not sane’. Which of course throws into question any and all of the protagonist’s considerations and actions. Perhaps think on that.