Paul M Ford – Theatre Workshop Coulsdon

The Box of Delights

Before Harry Potter, before The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, there was The Box of Delights.

Just days before Christmas, young Kay Harker is travelling home by train from boarding school, to spend the festive season with his guardian Caroline Louisa. Seemingly by chance, he makes friends with a dog and then the dog’s mysterious master, but when they vanish and two suspicious-looking men board the train looking for them, Kay finds himself caught up in a struggle between good and evil for the possession of the most powerful magical artefact the world has ever seen, The Box of Delights.

The murderous magician Abner Brown has been hunting for the Box for years and will stop at nothing to get it. His wolves, and the villainous high-society thief Sylvia Daisy Pouncer and her crew, have been tasked to find it at all costs. As the snow falls on the little town of Condicote, can Kay and his friends Maria and Peter really stop them?

Magic, adventure and spectacle abound in this seasonal tale as the three children find themselves in a desperate race against time to save Christmas and just possibly the world.

Written by the then Poet Laureate John Masefield in 1935, the original story was a sequel to an earlier book of his ‘The Midnight Folk’. Elegantly whimsical at times, the tale of children becoming involved in a magical world was a precursor to other stories that have become far more famous, such as C S Lewis’ ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ (‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ et al) which was first published in 1950, and J K Rowling’s cultural behemoth ‘Harry Potter’, which first saw light of day in 1997. There are definitely echoes of Masefield’s creations in both, and if you’re a fan of either, you’ll find much here to entertain you.

From Christmas carols to flying cars, this is festive family adventure at its finest.

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Animal Farm

One night, all the animals at Manor Farm gather in the barn to hear ‘Old Major’, a pig, describe a dream he had about a world where all animals live free from the tyranny of their human masters. The elderly pig dies soon after the meeting, but the animals — inspired by his philosophy of Animalism — plot a rebellion against the farmer, Jones. When Jones drunkenly forgets to feed the animals, they rise up, and Jones and his farmhands are chased away. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm, and the Seven Commandments of Animalism are painted on the barn wall. But what follows is far from the dream that Old Major promised…

‘All Animals Are Equal – But Some Are More Equal Than Others’

George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ is a powerful and uncompromising allegory of the Russian revolution, with every character and event that takes place in his tale mirroring Russian history from October 1917 through to the Teheran Conference of 1943.

The succession of steps through which, by persuasion, propaganda, lies and force, Napoleon rises to power in ‘Animal Farm’ are a bitter parody of Josef Stalin’s ascent to dictatorship, and what Orwell saw as the ultimate betrayal of the Russian people.

A fable, a satire, a fairy story, ‘Animal Farm’ is one of the great works of English literature, and a revealing study of the effects of power.

The evocative, and by association, now chilling music chosen by the director to open the production was ‘Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis’ written by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The same composer’s ‘Five variants of Dives and Lazarus’ was used to maintain the mood during the interval.

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.

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.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This is the second time that Theatre Workshop have visited the strangely English forest that exists just outside Shakespeare’s Athens. Peter Quince and his band of tradesmen cum would-be actors have wandered out from the city to ensure they’re not overlooked as they go about their amateur thespian labours, but either they’ve wandered much further than they intended from the busy streets of London, or there’s a thriving English enclave of ex-pat artisans tucked away in the shadow of the Parthenon.

There are changes. Not least in the location of our endeavours. Having seized the opportunity to take the group from its home and perform in the open-air just three years previously, we’ve gone further, and at the invitation of Southern Water, will take the production to the shores of the Bewl Water reservoir, near Lamberhurst in Kent. Though the setting is idyllic, this represents no small undertaking, especially for an amateur group whose members are mostly in full-time employment. So we can feel for Messrs Starveling, Bottom, Snug, Snout and co., as we do a full day’s work and then barrel down the A21.

But we’ve not given up on our first open-air home, and will perform first at The Woodman before packing up and heading for Bewl. We could hardly do otherwise, given that it’s our regular watering-hole.

Let’s talk about the music for a moment. Most of the music you’ll hear will be played live by Mark Taylor, though there are a couple of passages that are pre-recorded. He’s composed most of it himself too, because he’s a talented gentleman. Exceptions include the fairy and bergomask dances in Act IV and V which are set to traditional tunes. He’s also composed the music for ‘Philomel with Melody’, whose lyrics are by Shakespeare, and given that Shakespeare’s own lyrics to the fairy benediction at the end of the play are lost to us, we’ve used a 5th Century Celtic blessing as the basis for a song, which again will be accompanied by Mark Taylor’s music.

One last thing. The production is dedicated to the memory of Lesley Argles, a member of Theatre Workshop almost since the beginning. She died aged just 44, as the result of a tragic accident on the 13th July, only two weeks before curtain up. Her husband, Chris, who she met through the group, as well as her son, Luke, and daughter Kimberley, are all on stage here tonight. They were united in their decision that the production should go ahead with their full participation, despite grievous personal loss. They are certain it was what she would have wanted.

The Three Musketeers

France 1625.

A young nobleman called D’Artagnan leaves his family in Gascony, south-west France, and makes his way to Paris to seek his fortune and join the King’s Musketeers. Unfortunately he encounters Rochefort, Captain of the Cardinal’s guard at a rural inn, and after an ill-advised confrontation, loses his letter of introduction to M.de Treville, (the captain of the King’s Musketeers), his money and his sword. So, when he finally arrives at the French capital, his welcome is far from warm. Things take a turn for the even worse when his first meetings with Athos, Porthos and Aramis, the best of the Musketeers, result in him challenging each of them to duels. Finally, taken under the wing of the Three Musketeers rather than being killed by them, the young Gascon finds himself embroiled in the machinations of the cunning Cardinal Richelieu and his deadly agent, Milady de Winter, with plans to dishonour the Queen of France herself. A tale of high adventure, full of fun, swordplay and affairs of the heart…

Originally written by Alexandre Dumas (in collaboration with his regular ghost writer Auguste Maquet) and published in 1844, this swashbuckling historical tale became one of the most enduring adventures in literature, challenged only by, perhaps, ‘Treasure Island’. Numerous adaptations have been made, for stage and screen, including musicals, animation, and even an opera. The script that Chris Argles chose to direct was by Willis Hall, and had been published just the previous year, 1995. Although it keeps to the story, more or less, inevitably some liberties are taken and Hall leans into the humour, no doubt one reason for its selection.

It has passed into Workshop legend that Mike Brown, playing, or rather completely inhabiting the role of Porthos, at one point during the production ran across the stage completely naked, except for a strategically placed broad-brimmed musketeer hat (with a large feather). The part demanded it, obviously.

Treasure Island – The Panto, or ‘Panto Walks The Plank’

‘Treasure Island’, that perennial favourite of British children since its first publication, might seem like an obvious candidate for panto treatment. However, actually arriving at a well-rounded pantomime, incorporating all the essential elements of that genre but also sticking fairly strictly to the plot and characters of Stevenson’s great novel, poses a few problems!

So if ‘Panto Walks The Plank!’ gets under way as a close pastiche of ‘Treasure Island’, you might notice it change tack part way through, in order to accommodate a boarding party of pirate clichés inspired by a wider literature.

After all, as any fan of the Hollywood pirate epics of the 1930s and 1940s will tell you, ‘Treasure Island’ (one of the most famous adventure stories in English literature) is fatally flawed. There’s absolutely no love interest. In fact there are no women at all, with the exception of Mrs Hawkins, and she’s written out of the plot by page 27!

Now, no good pirate movie was truly complete without the love interest, usually represented by Maureen O’Hara. Or the presence of the dastardly Spanish, immaculately attired, elegantly presented and constantly scheming. In fact, the two elements were so quintessential that they were frequently combined through the well-worn dramatic device of ‘Swashbuckling hero falls for the haughty yet gorgeous daughter of the wicked Spanish governor’. So, expect to find both in our version too,

There are other important omissions from ‘Treasure Island’ that undermine its credentials as a bona-fide all-round classic pirate story. For instance, absolutely no-one walks the plank! Now, as it happens, that’s probably because no-one ever really did walk the plank. People who really know their pirates will tell you that this infamous punishment was simply the macabre whimsy of the Victorians and their overheated imaginations. However, if you’re set on telling a good old-fashioned blood and thunder tale of skulduggery on the high seas, you’ve got to include it. It’s part of the tradition.

Being a pantomime also dictates certain changes to the story. For instance, no-one is horribly murdered. Any violence is strictly of the gratuitous slapstick variety. And of course, Long John’s legendary parrot serves splendidly as a pantomime animal. This one even talks! And a ‘Crimson Parakeet’ does have a certain resonance with the 1952 Burt Lancaster comedy adventure movie, ‘The Crimson Pirate’, filmed in glorious Technicolour!

So, shiver your timbers and splice your mainbrace, while Theatre Workshop heaves to and delivers a hefty broadside of fun and adventure. And you may lay to that, arrrrrh!

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340 – 1400) has been called the father of English Literature. Certainly there is nothing quite like his epic ‘The Canterbury Tales’ to put the present-day observer in touch with the ordinary life of our medieval forebears. Nothing to match the unflinching realism of Chaucer’s portraits of his fellow men. And nothing quite so effectively holds up a mirror, not only to the England of his times – but to the unchanging nature of human experience.

We considered four different published playscripts before creating our own adaptation of ‘The Canterbury Tales’. In the end we decided against paying royalty fees to use someone else’s script. After all, Chaucer is part of our shared heritage – his words should belong to all of us.

Across the different playscripts there had been a range of selections made regarding which tales were best to tell. Clearly, given that there are 28 tales in all, you can’t use all of them in one two hour show (and note that Chaucer had intended for there to be 120!), so a choice has to be made. However, most seemed to go for the stories with classical settings, such as The Knight’s Tale, The Franklin’s Tale and The Merchant’s tale.

Focused on the nobility, and concentrating on stories of courtly love and mortal combat as they are, we decided that these rarified tales were not the ones we wanted to tell. We wanted to hear from the ordinary people, engaged in the medieval day-to-day of simple pleasures, petty jealousies and mundane squabbles. Exuberant and resilient folk, yet dominated by an overbearing Church. So, these are the stories we chose:

The Nun’s Priest’s Tale

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

The Friar’s Tale

The Pardoner’s Tale

The Miller’s Tale

The Reeve’s Tale

Our adaptation is actually based on the 1985 Oxford University Press translation by David Wright, though we’ve edited out much of the narrative in favour of dialogue. This is a drama after all, not a story telling, and that has meant some minor amendments in order to make sense of the editing. Regardless, we’ve actually added or rewritten very little. So the words you’ll hear spoken are Chaucer’s own, translated with fidelity into modern English by one of the foremost scholars in this field. If you take any pleasure from the tales we unfold for you today, reflect for a moment on the fact that these are the same stories that entertained your ancestors, some 600 years ago.

Lark Rise

Welcome to the tiny hamlet of Lark Rise. It is the first day of the harvest, one summer early in the 1880’s…

Flora Thompson’s autobiographical trilogy ‘Lark Rise’, ‘Over To Candleford’ and ‘Candleford Green’, describing her childhood in a remote Oxfordshire farming community has been termed English Literature’s classic masterpiece of a lost way of village life – a vivid and moving account, rich in fascinating detail.

In 1978, Keith Dewhurst’s acclaimed adaptation for The National Theatre took characters and episodes, songs and scenes directly from the books, to create two composite plays – ‘Lark Rise’ and ‘Candleford’. Each of the plays also featured a wealth of traditional music contributed by the influential British folk-rock group, The Albion Band. (John Tams and Ashley Hutchings, both members of the band, acted as musical directors for the play.)

The result is an enchanting play which, while lacking a strong narrative, does offer an evocative and entertaining glimpse into how our ancestors lived and worked in the years before The Great War, and the machine age that finally succeeded in sweeping England’s rural innocence away forever. In place of The Albion Band we have The Royal Borough Band, led by Dave Hankey, with a few of our own members helping to provide vocals.

We hope you will accept our production of ‘Lark Rise’ as a pleasant diversion fit for a summer’s evening – especially in the garden of what is still, very much, a village pub.