2022 Season
A BUNCH OF AMATEURS
Tickets from just £10.50!
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A Bunch of Amateurs
By Ian Hislop & Nick Newman Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds Dates 22 to 28 May 2022 Director - Chris Lines Shakespeare meets Hollywood, and let’s just say they don’t see eye to (Private) eye in this brilliant comedy by Nick Newman and Ian Hislop. In the sleepy Suffolk village of Stratford St John, the local am-dram group is in a desperate situation. They need to raise funds to save their little theatre (actually a barn…) so they hit on the idea of asking a well-known actor to play King Lear. That’s bound to raise the money needed! Hollywood action hero Jefferson Steel agrees to take on the role as a way of reviving his flagging career, believing, of course, that he will be playing with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the other Stratford (on Avon!) Enjoy the mayhem that ensues when Hollywood arrogance butts heads with the village’s own ‘star’ player and see how the women of the company react to having a real-life, womanising action hero in their midst. A love letter to amateur dramatics, as the authors describe it. PLus you get to see all the best bits of King Lear in just 10 minutes! “And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” |
THE TEMPEST
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By William Shakespeare
Abbey Gardens, Bury St Edmunds Dates 19 to 23 July 2022 Director - Tim Lodge Another shipwreck lands young Prince Ferdinand, along with his father and various courtiers, on a magical island inhabited only by the beautiful Miranda and her father Prospero. Since being deliberately abandoned on the island by some of these same courtiers, when Miranda was just a baby, Prospero has spent his time practicing magic. In the process he has conjured up an airy, and musical, spirit, Ariel, and a particularly loathsome monster called Caliban along with various and numerous other supernatural characters. It's Prospero’s magic, in fact, that conjures up the storm that scatters the ship’s passengers and crew around the island. This he does to avenge those responsible for his being marooned. Happily, the falling in love at first sight of Ferdinand and Miranda (actually, he’s the only man other than her father that Miranda has ever seen) fits with Prospero’s plans very nicely. So, before he sails back to resume his rightful place in the court, he organises an enchanted, and enchanting, betrothal ceremony for the young couple. As ever, we’ll be performing The Tempest in our trademark ‘Shakespearean’ costume and style. We’ll be making the most of the substantial amount of music in the play. (It’s really a musical, written in 1613, with a very simple plot). We hope you will enjoy the spectacular imagery, sounds, dance, and of course the poetry of The Tempest while sitting in Bury St Edmunds’ lovely Abbey Gardens with your picnic in the warm July sunshine! |
SWIVE
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By Ella Hickson
Unitarian Meeting House, Churchgate, Bury St Edmunds Dates: 6 to 8 October 2022 Director - Chris Lines Elizabeth I is the only unmarried woman to have ever ruled England. And she reigned for forty-four years. Mastermind. Seductress. Survivor. Created by award-winning writer Ella Hickson and director Natalie Abrahami, Swive [Elizabeth] shines a light on the ways and means by which women in power negotiate patriarchal pressure in order to get their way. It premiered in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe, London, in December 2019. |
EDITH IN THE DARK
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By Philip Meeks
Unitarian Meeting House, Churchgate, Bury St Edmunds Dates 10 to 12 November 2022 Director - Maggie Kinnear-King Celebrated children’s author Edith Nesbit (The Railway Children, Five Children & It) retreats to her attic writing room during one of her husband’s tiresome parties with her housekeeper and an unexpected, handsome party guest. |