Martin Smith – Theatre Workshop Coulsdon

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.

Journey’s End

R.C.Sheriff’s play is set in the officer’s dug-out of a British infantry company in the trenches facing Saint Quentin. It is the 18th of March, 1918, and in just a few days, the German army will begin Operation Michael, the opening of Ludendorff’s Spring offensive intended to push the British Expeditionary Force into the sea and capture the Channel ports. For the Germans, it is the last roll of the dice in the Great War, which has been going on since August 1914 and wiped out a generation of young men across the continent. In the trenches, the constant threat of death and the fear that generates, along with the loss of friends and comrades, has deeply affected every man there, and each deals with it in their own way. Captain Stanhope leads the infantry company, with a keen sense of duty but a growing dependence on alcohol to cope with the pressures of command. When the young and naive Raleigh joins the company, his precarious balance is disturbed…

After it was written, Sheriff encountered resistance in getting the play produced in London’s West End. There was a reluctance to put on a play about the war, which having ended just ten years previously, was all too fresh in people’s minds. Others baulked at the idea of a play without a leading lady, which would hinder ticket sales. Eventually, the Independent Stage Society were persuaded, after some words from George Bernard Shaw, to put it on at the Apollo Theatre. They still hedged their bets. It was a ‘semi-staged’ production, meaning no sets and minimal props, and would run for just two nights. The lead, Captain Stanhope, would be played by a 21 year old unknown…called Lawrence Olivier. However, when the curtains finally rose on the evening of Sunday, December 9, 1928, in the audience was Maurice Brown, a West End producer. He was impressed, enough at least to take a gamble on booking it to open at the Savoy Theatre on January 21, 1929. Even then, it received minimal promotion and no advance bookings were taken. However, word of mouth was enough, and ‘Journey’s End’ sold out, and proceeded to run for a further two years to packed houses.

Sheriff himself didn’t see the play as being expressly an anti-war piece, rather it was an account of his own experiences. He’d been only 18 when he’d gone to France as a Captain in the 9th East Surrey Regiment, and fought at Vimy, Loos and Passchendaele, where he was severely wounded. He’d written other plays and would go on to write more, though ‘Journey’s End’ remained his most famous stage work. He’d go on to write screenplays too, receiving an Academy (Oscar) nomination for ‘Goodbye, Mr Chips’ (1939) and a BAFTA nomination for ‘The Dambusters’ (1955).

The Fairy Godfather

In 1972, Francis Ford Coppola gave us the gangster epic ‘The Godfather’. Set in 1940’s New York, it centred on the criminal empire of the Corleone family, led by Marlon Brando’s iconic Don Corleone, and it single-handedly set the tone for American Mafia/Mob/Gangster movies to follow ever since. Nowhere did it say anything about pantomimes.

Richard Lloyd made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. He’d written a pantomime that less than delicately mashed up a bucket of well-used mafia gangster tropes, spread them over a comedy base, added some spicy panto sauce and served them up with side order of rollicking good songs, finishing with a rousing (everybody join in!) rendition of ‘That’s Amore!’. There are good fairies, evil villains, a dame and a gondola-full of Italian cheese gags. You just have to look at the cast list.

So we had to put it on. Really, we had to. And now you gotta to watch it, capisce?

Cut yourself in for a pizza the action tonight.

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 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.)

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!

Much Ado About Nothing

‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is a comedy of love nearly thwarted by villainy, and tragedy narrowly averted. It is held by many to be one of the most verbally dextrous of Shakespeare’s works, and the dialogue fairly sparkles with witty repartee, chiefly from Benedick and Beatrice, two of his most compelling and human creations.

The setting is a Sicily at war. Don Pedro, the Prince of Aragon, returns from the fighting, with his entourage, to stay with his old friend Leonato, the Governor of Messina.

While there, Claudio, a member of Don Pedro’s retinue, quickly falls in love with Leonato’s daughter, Hero. It’s a cause for much celebration, in most parts. However, Don John, Don Pedro’s bastard brother, sees only a chance to sew discord, and with the help of his two henchmen, Conrade and Borachio, they plot to break up the loving pair and ruin Hero’s reputation..

Elsewhere, another scheme is put into place, but his time it’s with chiefly good intentions. Benedick, a good comrade to Don Pedro, and Beatrice, Leonato’s niece, have known each other for some time. They trade insults, they verbally spar whenever they are together. All but they can see the spark of something special between them. And so the plan is hatched by Don Pedro to push the warring duo away from conflict and into loving reconciliation, getting the two to see each other as others see them.

When all is said and done both couples find themselves together, but not before they run a gauntlet of lies and confusion, flirting with each other and disaster.

‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is undoubtedly one of Shakespeare’s finer plays, possibly his best comedy, edged only by ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Much of it though, if you look hard enough, makes no sense. Don Pedro is a Spanish warlord, with two of his closest companions coming from rival Italian city states, Padua and Florence. For no explained reason, they’re fighting in Sicily. Leonato at least sounds Italian, but Beatrice and Hero, not to mention servants Margaret and Ursula, don’t. And the whole of the watch, Dogberry, Verges, Hugh Oatcake etc. have clearly been parachuted in from England. Best not to dwell on it.

Talking of which, TWC has edited the Bard’s script. I know, how dare we! Well, if it was good enough for Kenneth Branagh in his 1992 film adaptation, it’s good enough for us. Really, it had to be done. A lot, and we mean a lot, of references to cuckolds and horns needed to go, and there are only so many allusions to obscure classical mythology any audience can take. And cast for that matter.

So, sit back and relax. Be taken to an island in the Mediterranean, and treated to some of Shakespeare’s finest prose. And maybe a pint or two…

Mort

Welcome to Discworld, the light-hearted fantasy universe devised by the author Terry Pratchett and unleashed upon an unsuspecting world in 1983, with the publication of the first Discworld novel, ‘The Colour of Magic’. Contained within its pages was a fleeting appearance of Death, not as a concept but as a personification, complete with hooded robe (over a seven foot tall skeletal body), scythe, sonorous voice and riding a pale horse called… Binky.

Death would go on to become one of Pratchett’s defining creations, and appeared in all bar two of the 41 Discworld novels that Pratchett wrote before his death in 2015. In ‘Mort’, the fourth Discworld novel, published in 1987, the story focuses on Death as he takes an apprentice, the aptly named Mort (‘Mort’ meaning ‘death’ or ‘dead’ in French). Mort, who prefers to be called by his full name, Mortimer, is a gangly, inattentive but well-meaning teenager whose father is only too glad to pass on to another’s responsibility.

Mort does his best of course, but allows his feelings to get in the way. One night, while undertaking ‘The Duty’, he’s called to the bedroom of Princess Keli of Sto Lat, who is about to be assassinated by an agent of the scheming Duke of Sto Helit. Rather than simply escort her soul away in the aftermath of her death however, he prevents the assassination, which sounds great, but sadly, it doesn’t end there. She may not have been killed, but as her death was already pre-determined, people are beginning to act as if she’s not really there…

Stephen Briggs adapted ‘Mort’ for the stage in 1993, and as a frequent collaborator with the author has actually adapted over twenty of Terry Pratchett’s novels for the amateur stage. TWC have performed three of them, ‘Mort’, ‘Wyrd Sisters’ and ‘Lords and Ladies’, all directed by Mike Brown.

Cinderella Interstellar!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a pantomime that looked quite a lot like ‘Star Wars’…

Take Cinderella and her ugly sisters and then thrust them into a world of science-fiction adventure, inhabited by characters that are nearly, but not quite, those from the epic blockbuster trilogy of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

A cocky, star-faring smuggler and his hairy co-pilot, a kid who’s a whiz behind the controls of space fighter, a monk-like individual wise in the ways of the Source, a black-clad villain in a full-face helmet with breathing difficulties and an army of soldiers who can’t hit a Death Star at close range. They’re all there, just not as you knew them.

Throw in the best Cantina band this side of Tatooine to help belt out some brilliant songs, and you’ve got a powered up panto ready to do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.

This is the panto you were looking for.