Person: Morgan Lloyd

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…

Lords and Ladies

It’s a hot midsummer’s night in the tiny kingdom of Lancre, up in the far northern hill country of Discworld. Crop circles are turning up everywhere, bursting like raindrops, a portent of wayward magic leaking into the land from between the standing stones known as ‘The Dancers’.

Magrat Garlick, witch, is getting married in the morning – to King Verence of Lancre no less. The wizards of the Unseen University are journeying north from the great city of Ankh-Morpork to bless the union, and the Lancre All-Comers Morris Team have been lined up to stage a rustic entertainment for the happy couple. In short, everything should be going like a dream.

But all is not well in Lancre. Elves, long banished from the human realm are pushing at the iron boundaries of their barren winter land, bringing with them all those things traditionally associated with the magical, glittering realm of faerie: cruelty, kidnapping, malice and murder.

‘The Dancers’ form the gateway between the two worlds, and for many years, Granny Weatherwax and her tiny argumentative coven have worked to keep that portal tightly closed. But now a new coven, led by the young, ambitious and wilful Diamanda (real name Lucy Tockley, but Diamanda sounds so much better) are determined to overturn the old order…

And when the Lancre morris team gets seriously drunk on a fairy mound, all Hell is ready to break loose. In short, it’s a festival of dwarves, wizards, trolls, morris dancers – plus an orang-utan, with a fair helping of hey-nonny-nonny and blood all over the place… We hope you enjoy tonight’s performance!

A big thank you to Debbie Bradshaw and Katy Tupholme at Bluetree Design and Print of Rotherham for designing our posters for the production, and to Mark Lewis and Nick Hewson at Mastercolour of Tunbridge Wells for printing them.

‘Lords and Ladies’ (1992) is adapted from the comic fantasy novel by prolific author Terry Pratchett, his fourteenth set on Discworld, and the fourth to feature the Lancre coven of witches led by the redoubtable Esmerelda ‘Esme’ Weatherwax, a character who Pratchett clearly enjoyed revisiting. Astonishingly successful, he sold over 100 million copies of his books, forty-one of which were Discworld novels, and he was awarded first the OBE in 1998 and then a knighthood in 2009. He died at the age 66, from complications relating to Alzheimer’s Disease, which he had been diagnosed with in 2007.
 
Following on from ‘Wyrd Sisters’ in 1995 and ‘Mort’ in 1997, ‘Lords and Ladies’ is the third stage adaptation of a Discworld novel that Theatre Workshop Coulsdon have undertaken, and any similarities to Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ are purely intentional. Nor is it a coincidence that all three have been directed by Mike Brown.

Sinbadaladdin

Sinbad sails into panto peril with Aladdin on board for laughs!

Sinbad the sailor, or Sinbad of the sea, was the hero of a series of stories outlining his seven voyages across and around the Indian Ocean. He came from Baghdad, now capital of Iraq, then the capital of the sprawling Abbasid Empire that stretched from Tunisia in the west to Pakistan in the East. The original tale of Aladdin is also set in the Middle East. And yet, in panto, this tale of a poor boy made good is landed in a Chinese laundry, surrounded by absurd cod-Chinese names and a mother, Widow Twankey, closer to the East End of London than the Far East. This has long been the case, since 1788 in fact, when John O’Keefe staged the first Aladdin pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Richard Lloyd has leant into the exotic influence, with his new pantomime mash-up featuring a significant flavour of the Orient (not the Leyton version). Wizards, pirates, genies, beautiful heroines and brave heroes abound, even if these last do look a lot like girls. Widow Twankee gets up to her usual mischief as manageress of the laundry – not so ably assisted by slopper-out Wishee-Washee, while the feisty Princess Jasmine steals Aladdin’s heart and risks the wrath of her father, the Sultan Ming the Mirthless and her ghastly mother, the Sultana No-Lo-Fat. The terrifying magician Abanazar, meanwhile, proves a formidable rival for Jasmine’s hand in marriage.

Songs, sorcery and silliness, with a touch or two of derring-do. Now that’s a pantomime, wherever it comes from.

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame – The Panto

 

‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ was originally a novel by celebrated French writer Victor Hugo, first published in 1831. Set in 15th Century Paris, it centres on the unrequited love that Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of the famous cathedral, has for Esmerelda, a beautiful Romani dancer. Sadly, she only has eyes for the handsome captain Phoebus of the King’s archers, but unknown to the young girl, Phoebus is vain, untrustworthy and a womanizer. Esmeralda’s beauty has also attracted two other men, a poet, Gringoire, and the darkly motivated arch-deacon of Notre Dame Cathedral, Claude Frollo, who is also Quasimodo’s guardian. It’s an epic tale of misplaced love, exploring themes on social marginalisation and even the power of architecture, and ends in tragedy. So, absolutely perfect for a TWC panto then!

With the addition of broker’s men Ratatouille and Cassoulet, not to mention the uproarious Frottez LaToilette well and truly putting the Dame into Madame, this is great French literature as you’ve never seen it before! (let’s not even talk about the Disney cartoon, eh?) Oh, and the goat? Jingli Jangli? Not Mr Lloyd’s invention. Victor Hugo gave us Djali the goat (we changed the name to protect the innocent) on whom Gringoire becomes oddly fixated, with tragic results. Ah, the French. Qu’est-ce que c’est?

 

Jack The Ripper (2006)

Is it lazy to return to a play that you’ve staged before?

Or maybe – like revisiting a favourite book or film – there’s more to be explored and enjoyed a second, or even third time around?

Theatre Workshop Coulsdon first staged Ron Pember and Denis De Marne’s ‘Jack the Ripper’ back in 1983. We went back to it just eight years later in 1991. Cumulatively, we’ve probably paid enough in licencing fees to send the two authors on a good long holiday. Many of the 1991 cast are performing again is this production. Three of the 1983 cast are here too, young theatre pups now turned grizzled stage veterans. Richard Lloyd has played the ruffian Daniel Mendoza in all three!

So why do we keep coming back? Frankly, because it’s an exhilarating show to be a part of. It’s got great songs, songs you remember and hum along to, or even sing out loud, long after the final curtain has dropped. Mainly though, it’s just a very TWC kind of show. It’s brash, irreverent and a little (little?) over the top. It feels as if it were written for us.
 
When we first put ‘Jack the Ripper’ on, it was considered an obscure and somewhat controversial choice. Since then, it’s become something of regular staple on the amateur theatre circuit, but we haven’t let that put us off. This show was meant to treated in the rough and ready manner of the seedy East End it portrays, not with the polite diffidence of a well-trained light-operatic group. It’s rumbustiuous, down and dirty, leaning into the coarser side of the music hall tradition. We’ve seen others take this on, and when they’ve treated it as a finely sung choral piece, it loses its heart, and almost inevitably falls flat.
 
Of course, the subject matter might not be to everyone’s taste. Making a musical out of history’s most notorious serial-killer must count as an act of potentially dubious taste, even after well over a century. The original West End run of the show was cruelly short, perhaps for that very reason. And yet the mystery and murders of Jack the Ripper remain very much part of the cultural psyche of Britain, and probably further afield. Fresh films, documentaries, TV series, radio dramas appear on a regular basis. The hunger for ‘Jack’ is insatiable, or so it seems. The criminal, who most claim was never caught, has moved from simple mystery to almost the stuff of legend.
 
So, tonight, step in to the Steam Packet Music Hall and be hideously entertained. But watch your step on the way home, alright?

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

 

More Grimm Tales

The root of all theatre is storytelling, and the unfolding of a simple tale in the space between the teller and the listener is arguably the purest form of theatre.

Theatre Workshop has visited the stories of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, best known as the Brothers Grimm, before. Just three years ago we put on ‘Grimm Tales’ here in the pub beer-garden of The Woodman. That time we used a script taken from Tim Supple and the Young Vic Theatre Company, based on translations of the original German text by no less than Carol-Ann Duffy, the Scottish poet (who went on to become Poet Laureate in 2009). This time though we’re taking the project into our own hands, and the adaptation of the tales has been done by Richard Lloyd, with Heidi Bush and Mike Brown. This has the advantage of a script that plays to our company’s strengths. At least, that’s the plan. And though the tales hark back to some of the darker aspects of folklore, indeed we’ve leant into that idea, it remains a family show in more ways than one. The Lloyd family entire will be on stage this evening, as will three quarters of the Martin family, while the remaining quarter will have undoubtedly given you ‘The best seat in the house’ as you entered the auditorium area. So it can’t be that scary, can it?

The stories we have selected for your entertainment are;

Little Snow White

Briar Rose

The Robber Bridegroom

Clever Hans

The Musicians of Bremen

The Spirit in the Bottle

The Devil and his Mother

The Frog Prince

Now listener, make yourself comfortable and we shall let the tales unfold.

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!’.