Person: Rebecca Ford

Lionheart! or The Arabian Knights

Are you a sucker for the mysterious orient? Dashing bandits and svelte houris, idyllic oases and teeming souks, hawk-faced magicians, desert-defying caravans, corrupt Grand Viziers, gorgeous palaces, and Ray Harryhausen-style special effects? ‘Lionheart! The Arabian Knights’ is an eastern concoction into which every conceivable Arabian Nights cliché has been stirred, seasoned with a tiny twist of alternative history, and cunningly bound together in a traditional pantomime recipe, featuring lots of familiar ingredients and a dash of local flavour.

As part of his fiendish plot to defeat Richard the Lionheart, the evil Saladin sends his henchmen on a magic carpet to Merrie England, to abduct Richard’s Sweetheart, Thomasina. But Saladin’s bungling agents, Oshgosh and Babu, return instead with Thomasina’s irrepressible auntie, Dame Dollop – who quickly proves that the wicked Caliph has bitten off rather more than he can chew.

Thomasina meanwhile, travelling to join King Richard’s Crusade, encounters the dashing brigand, Hassan the Bandit. Hassan, (who may not be quite what he seems) is no friend to Saladin, and together with Thomasina they set out to rescue Auntie!

With the help of an assortment of genies, assassins, eunuchs, Turkish wrestlers, dancing girls and pantomime camels, Dame Dollop escapes from the harem to outwit Saladin, and allow Richard to recapture the holy city of Jerusalem, and all in time for Christmas Day!

A hilarious, original, and thoroughly entertaining pantomime, guaranteed to transport all involved to the land of the Arabian Nights.

Macbeth

The ‘Scottish’ play… or so some in the business call ‘Macbeth’, supposedly because of some ill-luck that follows the play around. We don’t believe it. The fact that Paul, who had just been cast as Macbeth himself, fell while running for a bus and broke his arm, was purely coincidence.

But putting superstition aside, what is ‘Macbeth’? Viewed from one perspective, it’s a tragedy, where a good man, a good soldier, finds himself coerced into making appalling decisions that ultimately lead to he and his wife’s death. Towards the end, reviewing the bloody path he’s taken, he is saddened but no less determined to see the story through to what he believes ultimately will be a victorious end, only to find that victory dashed from his blood-stained hands by a question of semantics. Taking another view, it’s a history. Macbeth was indeed King of Alba (Scotland), from 1040 to 1057, but the real man was no tyrant seizing the throne through murder and deception. Macbethad mac Findlaech, or Macbeth MacFinlay as the name is Anglicised, was the Mormaer (Earl) of Moray when King Duncan I led an army against him. Duncan died in battle, and Macbeth succeeded to the throne, where he stayed, unchallenged, for seventeen years. ‘The Red King’ as he was known, was regarded as a generous man, and even made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050. However, Macbeth died of wounds incurred at the battle of Lumphanan in 1057, at the hands of King Duncan’s son Malcolm, and Macbeth’s son Lulach was assassinated the following year, giving Malcolm the throne. King James VI of Scotland claimed a bloodline from Malcolm, so perhaps it’s not entirely surprising to find Macbeth’s character so sorely abused. Shakespeare knew his audience.

The photoshoot for Theatre Workshop Coulsdon’s production took place at Bodiam Castle, where, in those days, they didn’t mind a large group of people turning up in the car park to change into studded leatherette armour and start waving swords. From main gates to battlements we posed, looking suitably mean and moody, as befitted the production. Then it was decided that we should attempt a more active series of shots. Gathered at the main gatehouse, we would wait for the signal and then charge toward photographer Mark Hobbs. On the second run, Mark was joined by one or two camera-wielding tourists, on the third, several more. On the fourth and final, it seemed like we had a coach load of them. Fascinating to think that in a number of old photo albums scattered across some part the globe, the cast of TWC’s ‘Macbeth’ is immortalised, and those tourists still have no idea what on earth they had photographed.