Shakespeare Features Twice During April at the Questors |
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Much Ado About Nothing plus soap star in bard mash up
April 6, 2023 Sicily, 1920: the war is over, and the soldiers return home to let their hair down and fall in love. Young Claudio is smitten with virginal and beautiful Hero, while clever Benedick and Beatrice ignite an old flame, with a little help from meddling friends. Add a villain of the piece and a group of home guard worthies who lack every qualification for the job, and the fun is complete. This version of Shakespeare’s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, will run from 28 April to 6 May in the Judi Dench Playhouse. Coming Up at the Questors The Buccaneers A new family musical production, The Buccaneers is coming to The Questors Judi Dench Playhouse on 5 and 6 April. The show is an intricate drama with music aimed at all ages, except very young children. In conjunction with the show, there will be an educational workshop on the history of piracy given to schools in the area. The legend of Anne Bonny, John Rackham and Mary Read is reimagined in a musical drama. When four historical renegades come back to life with no memory of the past, how will the modern world affect them? What is the purpose of their resurrection and how will they react as their memories gradually return? Will reliving their past, change them for the future? And what dangers lurk in the shadows? Doing Shakespeare Steven Arnold, who is best known for playing Ashley Peacock in Coronation Street for fifteen years, is to appear in a production at The Questors in which confusion over Shakespeare leads to a farcical outcome.
In Doing Shakespeare, six actors meet up to do Shakespeare the way Shakespeare himself would have done Shakespeare: learning their parts separately and then meeting up on the day to go through entrances and exits, fights and jigs. However, due to a breakdown in communications, each actor has learnt a different play but rather than abandon the performance, they carry on regardless convincing themselves that the audience won’t notice. The Northern Comedy Theatre production of David Spicer’s play is directed by Shaun Chambers. It is being performed in Ealing from Thursday 20 April to Saturday 22 April at 7.30pm. The other cast members are Elliot Bailey, Kathryn Chambers, Vikki Earle, Farron Ronan and Robert Stuart-Hudson. The Northern Comedy Theatre originally produced the Doing series of zoom-based online performances at the start of the March 2020 lockdown, with titles such as Doing Whodunnit and Doing The Book Club, as well as Doing Shakespeare, earning them six OnComms awards and a special ONEOFF award from Off West End. Northern Comedy Theatre were formed in Merseyside in 2015. Their adaptation of the Doing series follows their premiere of All Above Board written by British comedy legend Nigel Planer, that toured in Summer 2021.
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