Spring Theatre Season 2001 at the Dukes (press release)
After a successful 2000 the Dukes are delighted to announce the Spring theatre season for 2001 for which Dukes' Artistic Director, Ian Hastings has chosen two very contrasting plays.
The first production, Skylight, is written by David Hare, one of the most successful writers in the West End and on Broadway, and is performed in the Studio. The second is an adaptation by Les Smith of Daniel Defoe’s novel, Moll Flanders, which will begin in the Dukes Theatre and will also go on tour to the Library Theatre in Manchester and to the Bristol Old Vic. "The two shows have only one point of contact - quality. If Moll Flanders is an extravagant celebration feast, then Skylight is nouvelle cuisine", said Ian Hastings. As part of the Spring theatre season, the Dukes are also pleased to be able to present a wide range of visiting shows that will cater for all tastes!
Skylight by David Hare
Friday 16th February (Press night) - Saturday 10th March
In the studio
Skylight is a play about people with ideas. Its two main characters struggle to balance the personal with the political. Kyra, a lively and capable woman, teaches at an East End comprehensive. Her former lover, Tom, is a famous and successful
restaurateur/entrepreneur. They haven't seen each other for three years and when Tom unexpectedly steps back into into Kyra’s life there is a great deal for them to catch up on. Skylight is a passionate play about making sense out of contemporary life, about love being lost and about facing up to feelings that have long since been forgotten.
Ideally suited to the studio, this production will make you want to join in the discussions on life, love and politics as you become drawn into Kyra and Tom's lives. Skylight will fire emotions and spark discussion long after you see the play!
Ian Hastings said: "Skylight is so wonderfully written, a play as complex as a person. It is a chamber piece of conversation, its focus is personal relationships - and yet its scope and range is vast. A huge play in a small box."
David Hare's other work includes the television screenplay Licking Hitler, the plays Slag, Plenty (also the screenplay for the feature film version), Secret Rapture and the acclaimed snapshot of British society, the trilogy Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges and The Absence of War. Hare also wrote and directed the feature film Wetherby and in 1998 made his stage debut in his own monologue Via Dolorosa, also shown recently on television. He is married to the fashion designer Nicole Farhi.
Moll Flanders
Daniel Dafoe's novel dramatised by Les Smith.
Friday 14th March (Press night) - Saturday 24th March
& Tuesday 10th April - Saturday 21st April
Moll Flanders is the second production for the Spring season and it is also going on tour to Manchester (The Library Theatre) and Bristol (Bristol Old Vic) so other audiences may experience the Dukes' high quality and hugely enjoyable theatre productions!
Moll Flanders is one of the earliest novels, and its heroine remains England’s most famous scarlet woman. Born in Newgate Prison, London, Moll quickly learnt the art of survival and lived a long life packed with incident, conducting her affairs with an eye firmly on business.
Ian Hastings said: "I commissioned this dramatisation for the Bristol Old Vic in 1995 and have been bursting to direct it again since the closing night. It is a story told with passion - it has Moll's hot blood coursing through its veins without it ever being gratuitous; a live lusty show that goes up and down the emotional scale without ever being a romp; often cheeky - never cheap."
Moll Flanders was many things including whore, thief, married woman (several times!), a widow and she was also transported to Virginia for eight years. A group of strolling actors playing various musical instruments will burst onto the Dukes stage to tell this colourful story. The production has three women to portray Moll to give full justice to her long, varied and uproarious life!
Moll Flanders will be a joyful, exuberant and celebratory work with some social conscience thrown in for good measure! Not to be missed!
Visiting productions and shows
In between Skylight and Moll Flanders, January, March, April and May see several touring shows at the Dukes, in both the studio and in the main auditorium. This season of touring shows is varied and interesting and will appeal to many people; from children to teenagers to adults. There are also two shows produced and performed by St.Martin's drama and performing arts students which have proved to be very popular in the past.
M6 Theatre Company
Forever
by Mary Cooper
Tuesday 16 & Wednesday 17 January in the Studio
A return visit of acclaimed North-West theatre company M6, with their play about the problems of a young couple bringing up a baby. Specially written for audiences of 14+.
Compact Theatre Company
Three Steps to Heaven
Saturday 13 January 8pm in the Dukes Theatre
Beatles to Boyzone, Elvis to Otis, Sinatra to Marley: songs from the last four decades of the last century woven together into a Northern comedy about the desire for change and having the courage to make fantasy a reality. Bud, Jag, Fly, Chip, Big Baz and Des all desperately want to escape their mid-life crises and discover their destinies with the ultimate touring club band. Three Steps to Heaven is by the same company who presented Muscle in 1999.
Eileen Page in Eleanor of Aquitaine - Mother of the Pride
by Catherine Muschamp
Sunday 20 January 8pm in the Dukes Theatre
Eileen Page, the leading RSC and West End actor in her one-woman show, which received rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival. Eleanor of Acquitaine was Richard Lionheart's mother, and the only woman to be Queen of England and France. Facing the judgement of history, this exceptional woman challenges the ghosts of her past.
St.Martin's Performing Arts Students
Euripides'
The Women of Troy 24th - 27th January
St.Martins' students will be performing Women of Troy, translated by Kenneth McLeish in the
Dukes' studio. After ten years of war the Greeks capture and destroy the city of Troy and a group of women are gathered to await their fate. Through the voices of these women that Euripides explores the morality and barbarism of war.
St. Martin's Drama Students
Bertolt Brecht's
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 31st January - 3rd February
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui chronicles the rise to power of fictional Chicago gangster Arturo Ui. Originally written in 1941 as a cautionary fable paralleling Hitler's rise to power in thirties Germany, it continues to sound a timely warning some 60 years on for a world still riddled with corruption, fear and self-interest.
Freehold Theatre Company
Kafka's Dick by Alan Bennett
Thursday 29 March 7.30pm
Friday 30 & Saturday 31 March 8pm in the Studio
In 1919, the tubercular Franz Kafka adjures his best friend Max Brod to burn all his writings after his death. Max, of course, goes on to publish all Kafka’s work, write the definitive biography and thereby instigate a whole lit-crit industry. Moving to present day Leeds, in a middle-class, suburban sitting-room sits Sydney. Sydney is a Kafka-besotted insurance agent who "would rather read about writers than what they write", for this is England where "gossip is the acceptable face of intellect". The dead but lively Max descends, closely followed by a cadaverous Kafka and Kafka’s larger than life father.
Monster Productions
Trouble Under Foot
For children aged 6 & under and their families
Tuesday 3 - Saturday 7 April in the Studio
From the same team who produced The Terrible Grump comes this lively children's show.
Trouble Under Foot tells the tale of poor Mr Dibble. The sun has stopped shining and all his vegetables are dying of cold. To the rescue comes Ratso and a bunch of philosophical worms. Mr Dibble must journey to the underworld and seek the advice of Grandmother Undergrumbly. With the help of the audience Dibble tricks the dragon, who has stolen the sun, into sharing it again so that the Winter turns to Spring, trees burst into leaf and the garden is restored.
Lancaster City Council present
The Thirteenth Lancaster Easter Maritime Festival: "Last Night Do"
Easter Monday, 16 April
The Dukes hosts the last night concert of the Lancaster Maritime Festival — the world’s biggest gathering of sea-song and shanty singers! Tickets and further information from the Lancaster Tourist Information Centre Tel: (01524) 32878.
Brian Patten
Armada
Wednesday 25 April 7.30pm
Brian Patten is one of the most accessible and popular poets working today. He made his name in the 1960s as one of the Liverpool Poets alongside Adrian Henri and Roger McGough and has been writing and performing poetry ever since. Armada, Brian Patten’s critically-acclaimed new book, is a collection of remarkable poems offering sharp, witty and provocative insights into life and the human condition. The powerful opening section interweaves poems about the death of his mother and memories of his childhood with her. It is his most personal and universal book to date. Juggling with Gerbils is Brian’s new book for 7 to 12 year olds (and their teachers/families). Our Sister the Mad Scientist, The Vampire Duck, Three Frazzles in a Frimple, Earwigs and many more new creations! With book signing after the show.
John Shuttleworth
Saturday 28 April 8pm in the Dukes Theatre
John Shuttleworth, star of TV hit 500 BusStops and five Radio 4 series of The Shuttleworths appears in Lancaster for one night only with the songs and stories of Sheffield’s funniest man and King of the Yamaha. Special guest Brian Appleton is the Forrest Gump of rock! His achievements in the music industry have been immense — unfortunately, nobody else except Brian seems to know about them.
Mike Maran Productions
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
by Louis de Bernieres
adapted by Mike Maran and Philip Contini
Saturday 5 May 8.30pm in the Dukes Theatre
Mike Maran brings this epic romance - set during the Second World War on the Greek island of Cephalonia - to the stage, as an operetta for a storyteller, two musicians, three puppets, a tuba, a motorbike and a goat. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin tells the story of Dr Iannis, his daughter Pelagia, the heroic Italian soldier Carlo Guercio, Captain Antonio Corelli, and the love they all share. It’s a passionate story that sweeps you up with joy one minute then makes the fright and rage of war boil in the stomach the next.
Not the National Theatre
A Place at the Table by Simon Block
Saturday 12 May 8pm in the Dukes Theatre
Not the National Theatre presented the hugely successful Women Laughing by Michael Wall at the Dukes in May last year. Their new tour A Place at the Table features Adam who is a young writer talent-spotted for television and Sarah, the novice script editor who discovered him. She believes her stunning proposal could make his reputation, her career, and a little bit of history!
Theatre O
3 Dark Tales
Thursday 17 May 7.30pm
Total theatre award winner and huge hit at the Edinburgh Festival 2000, this is the hilarious and heartbreaking story of three people whose lives, unbeknownst to them, are inextricably entwined. Featuring Mr Tibble who is an office-clerk and dragon slayer, Amelia Sas, a secretary and would-be opera singer and Frank an office-god and failed father.
Each one of them battles defiantly against life with ferociously funny and touchingly tragic results. This production includes a fantastic soundtrack, Keatonesque slapstick, big dance numbers and language as you’ve never heard it!
London Classic Theatre
The Game of Love and Chance by Pierre Carlet de Marivaux
Translated by David Baldwin & Michael Cabot
Directed by Michael Cabot
Wednesday 23 May
This play tells the story of Silvia who awaits the arrival of Dorante, the young gentleman her father has arranged for her to marry. She decides to exchange clothes with her maid, Lisette, so that she can observe her husband-to-be while in disguise. Meanwhile Dorante and his servant Harlequin have concocted a similar plan. The stage is set for confusion upon confusion as the two pairs of lovers collide… One of the most daring and original of 18th Century French dramatists, Marivaux wrote over thirty comedies of love and intrigue. In recent years, a rich crop of new productions including The Game of Love and Chance (National Theatre) and The Dispute (Lyric, Hammersmith) have rediscovered his comic virtuosity and dramatic skill, restoring his reputation to rival that of Moliere.
Urban Strawberry Lunch
Sonic
Saturday 2 June 7.30pm
Sonic is a 77-minute show of spellbinding musical alchemy from the awesome foursome of Junk Rock. New musical forms are fused with funky fresh beats and floor shaking bass to create a truly outstanding performance that explores the links between art, music and life.
USL are a group who make extraordinary music on strange and beautiful musical instruments that are made from everyday objects: the vac sax, the leg guitar, the windwire, car horns, the batphone, the urban gamelan and electric drums.