Winter Season
Chichester Festival Theatre and The Children's Touring Partnership in association with The National Theatre present The Bristol Old Vic production
Swallows and Amazons
A new musical by Helen Edmundson and Neil Hannon. Based on the book by Arthur Ransome
Swallows and Amazons
Festival Theatre
17 - 21 Jan 2012
Overview
'A terrific production - warm hearted,
affectionate and fun'
The Daily Telegraph
Winter Season
Reynolds
Reviews
The Telegraph
Hurrah! The Swallows and Amazons have sailed up the Strand and docked at the Vaudeville for Christmas, and, if you find a better family show on offer this festive season, feel free to send me the dreaded black spot.
First seen at the Bristol Old Vic last year, the production is funny, fresh inventive, and at times deeply affecting. This is a remarkable achievement as Arthur Ransome’s famous children’s novel, first published in 1930, seems a touch remote and stuffy these days. I remember struggling with all the nautical terms as a child, and found the children dull and priggish, especially in comparison with the anarchic delights of Richmal Crompton’s William stories.
But here it all works like a dream, almost literally so, as the story begins with the now elderly Titty (no nonsense here about changing the name to something less likely to cause stifled sniggers) looks back on her childhood adventures in the Lake District, creating them afresh from the cluttered attic of her memory.
As you would expect from the director Tom Morris, one of the key talents behind the National Theatre’s unstoppable international hit War Horse, this is a show that plugs directly into the audience’s imagination. A parrot is conjured out of a feather duster, scary cormorants are suggested by flapping black plastic bin-bags, and a couple of ribbons create the rippling waters of the lake.
Helen Edmundson’s adaptation perfectly captures the period flavour (“Can we have buttered eggs for tea? Hurrah!”), while the adult actors playing the children give fresh, strongly characterised performances that navigate a safe passage between the twee and cute.
As well as the inventiveness of the staging, the show’s secret weapon is a wonderful score by Neil Hannon, best known for a memorable slew of melodic and witty pop hits under the name the Divine Comedy.
He has a wonderful number here for the Amazons, the spunky Blackett sisters, deliciously played by Celia Adams and Sophie Waller in their war paint and Red Indian plumage, who sing: “We took to the lake like a duckling takes to water/ And embarked on a life of crime and mindless slaughter.”
But there are also passages in the production that evoke what Hardy called “the self unseeing”, by which he meant the lack of self-consciousness of childhood. As a result, as well as being great fun, the show, at least for adults in the audience, creates a strong undertow of emotion. It seems like an idyllic image of all that we have lost, but which we fleetingly recover while the performance is in progress.
Among the cast, Akiya Henry shines particularly brightly as a plucky, captivating Titty, but there is splendid work, too, from Richard Holt as the earnest oldest sibling, John, Katie Moore as his sensible sister Susan, while Stewart Walker, a big burly chap with a beard, plays the seven-year-old Roger to hilarious comic effect.
This is a show of wonder and delight, and after its West End run it tours nationally until May. Catch it if you can.
Evening Standard
Tom Morris played a significant part in the success of War Horse. Now, as artistic director of Bristol Old Vic, he's struck gold again with this inventive and enjoyable adaptation of Arthur Ransome's classic Swallows and Amazons. And he's persuaded Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy to contribute witty, satisfying music.
The story is simple. Four polite children, the Walkers, are spending the school holidays in the Lake District and take a borrowed boat, Swallow, to an uninhabited island. They think of themselves as explorers, and soon enough adventure comes their way: they encounter two fierce sisters, the Blacketts, whose craft the Amazon seems at first a daunting enemy - and then an ally as they tussle with the grumpy houseboat owner Captain Flint.
Helen Edmundson's script is faithful to the spirit of the novel, which is set in the summer of 1929.
The characterisation is generous, and Morris directs the ensemble with warmth, savouring the childish zest for pretending to be pirates while also honouring the detail and expansiveness of Ransome's writing.
The children are played by adults. Stewart Wright, who's over 30, is seven-year-old Roger, and although this seems incongruous it generates a good deal of amusement, thanks to Wright's ability to appear simultaneously sturdy and delicate.
Akiya Henry exudes an easy enthusiasm as the unfortunately named Titty Walker, while Richard Holt and Katie Moore are gently convincing as the other siblings. There's also memorable work from Celia Adams and Sophie Waller as the Blacketts.
Props are used sparingly and with considerable ingenuity. Two blue ribbons, stretched across the stage, suggest the sea. A duster and some secateurs together become a parrot. Bin bags are transformed into a sinister cormorant. There are plenty of other neat touches in Robert Innes Hopkins's design, and all the music - mostly uncomplicated, yet with a few eccentric gestures - is played onstage with admirable economy. When Swallows and Amazons was foisted on me as a child I didn't like it. Ransome's narrative felt too quaint as well as too steeped in a love of sailing and a certain kind of folksy Englishness. But in this reimagining it seems a rich and appealing fantasy, which pays aptly Christmasy homage to the power of the imagination. Following its London run, it will deservedly tour nationwide.
The Times
I have always been a bit of a barbarian when it comes to Swallows and Amazons. This children’s classic from 1930 isn’t hard to navigate like Moby Dick, I know. Yet on all my failed attempts to set sail with John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker for their summer-holiday escapade, I’ve let myself get bogged down by Arthur Ransome’s prose.
No longer. This musical play by the writer Helen Edmundson and the songwriter Neil Hannon (aka, the Divine Comedy) went down so well when it opened at the Bristol Old Vic last Christmas that it’s now docked in the West End briefly before embarking on a tour next year. And what a wonderful piece of theatre it is. As the adults playing these 7 to 12-year-olds stride around in their knee-length shorts preparing for their island jaunt, you melt — because they’re singing a song about facing the unknown, expressed in lines about packing the corned beef. And by the time they’ve set sail in Swallow, with castmates extending blue ribbons on either side of the boat to suggest — sensationally well — its progress through the water, you can’t help but climb on board.
The director Tom Morris uses overt stagecraft to co-opt our imagination here, as he did when he co-directed War Horse. The supporting actors also play instruments — strings and piano, mostly — and work the props. As the two Northern pirates from the rival boat, Amazon, ululate their way through the stalls, as Polly the parrot gets represented by a feather duster and a pair of secateurs, we always know that what we’re seeing is all let’s pretend.
Which is the perfect way to involve us in a story that’s all about let’s pretend. There is plenty of wry humour here, but Morris never allows it to undermine our sense of wonder. Indeed, there is a delicious sense of danger ahoy at the end of Act I as James Farncombe’s lighting dims on Robert Innes Hopkins’s set and the two sides declare war.
If the second half isn’t as thrilling as the first suggests it will be, and indeed if two-and-a-half hours is a few minutes too many, the home-made sense of daring endures and the cast of 13 do full justice to Hannon’s smart songs. Richard Holt nails the way that 12-year-old John goes from captain-of-school calm with children to unease with an adult; burly Stewart Wright milks the part of innocent little Roger for all its worth but not a drop more; Katie Moore is a treat as sensible Susan; Akiya Henry is plucky but never abrasive as Titty; Celia Adams and Sophie Waller are adorably unfriendly pirates.
So it’s a thoroughly entertaining, beautifully balanced show for all ages: sincere but not strait-laced, playful but not facetious. Maybe 85 million readers aren’t wrong after all.
Cast & Crew
CELIA ADAMS
Nancy Blackett
Training: LAMDA.
Theatre includes: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Duke’s, Lancaster), We All Fall Down (UK tour), Mike’s Wishes (Arcola), Savage/Love (Theatre 503), Weightless (High Tide Festival), The Fall of the House of Usher (Riverside Studios), Top Girls (Royal Court) and the original production of Swallows and Amazons (Bristol Old Vic).
Film and television include: The Bill, Macbeth’s Disciple and Robin Hood.
JASON BARNES
Sound Designer
Jason was Head of Sound for Bristol Old Vic (1999-2007).
West End sound designs include: When We Are Married (Garrick), Mrs Warren’s Profession (Comedy and UK tour), Private Lives (Vaudeville and Music Box Theater, Broadway), Enjoy (Gielgud and UK tour), We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Duchess and UK tour).
Other theatre includes: Swallows and Amazons (Bristol Old Vic), Canary (Liverpool Playhouse, Hampstead and UK tour), Low Pay? Don’t Pay! (Salisbury Playhouse), Juliet and Her Romeo (Bristol Old Vic), Hansel and Gretel (Bristol Old Vic and Kneehigh Theatre UK tour) and Quadrophenia (Plymouth Theatre Royal and UK tour).
GREG BARNETT
Flint/Band
Theatre includes: Tony Visconti in 20th Century Boy (New Wolsey), Brother Loves Travelling Salvation Show (UK tour), Sams in Pushing Up Poppies (Theatre503), Joe in Fame (Monte Carlo), Marry Me a Little (Everyman, Cheltenham), Keith in Spend Spend Spend (Watermill and UK tour), Queen in The Plantagenets Club (Young Vic), Ramon in Zorro (Garrick), Tom in White Liars (Etcetera), Cecco in Peter Pan (Birmingham Rep), Antonio in Twelfth Night (Northampton), Anthony in Sweeney Todd (UK tour), Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof (Courtyard), Mamma Mia! (Prince of Wales), Issachar in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Thelonious in Mickey Spatz’s Speakeasy (Arcola).
Film includes: The Narrow Gate, Elouise, Sweet Dreams and Feature Workshop.
FRANCESCA BRADLEY
Ensemble/Understudy
Training: Francesca studied drama and theatre arts at Goldsmiths College, and went on to do an MA in professional acting at ALRA.
She is delighted to be joining the cast of Swallows and Amazons as her first professional job.
CRESSIDA BROWN
Staff Director
Cressida Brown is the artistic director of site-specific Offstage Theatre whose work has been covered by Channel 4, ITN, BBC London TV and radio, national and international papers. She was awarded the National Theatre Studio’s Bulldog Prinsep bursary (2008). Theatre directing credits include: Amphibians (Bridewell), Home (Beaumont Estate), Phaedre (Craigmillar Castle), Scum (Trinity Buoy Wharf), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Novello), Sentenced (Union Theatre) and Things That Make No Sense (Southwark). Assisting credits include: Gregory Doran’s Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (RSC), The Enchanted Pig (Royal Opera House and Broadway) and Doubt (Tricycle).
ALISON CHARD CDG
Casting Director
Alison Chard has extensive credits for stage and screen over a 25-year career. She has cast dozens of productions for the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, where she was head of casting. She has cast most of Shakespeare’s plays, including Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, Iain Glen’s Henry V, Sir Derek Jacobi’s Macbeth, Sir Ian McKellen’s Richard III, Sir Robert Stephens’s King Lear and Toby Stephens’s Coriolanus and worked with many leading directors including Michael Attenborough, Michael Boyd, John Caird, Sir Richard Eyre, Nicholas Hytner, Phyllida Lloyd, Sam Mendes, Katie Mitchell, Tom Morris, Adrian Noble and Matthew Warchus.
Personal highlights include the world premiere of The Madness of George III, the UK premiere of Angels in America, The Wind in the Willows, the state-of-the-art CGI production of Peter Pan currently touring the USA, and Swallows and Amazons. She has also cast television series for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in a wide variety of genres – credits include MIT, Real Women, The Gift, The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, Dr Willoughby, Neverwhere and The Bill.
LIESEL CORP
Co-Costume Designer
Liesel Corp is a designer for Twisted Theatre and an associate artist of Bristol Old Vic.
Designs include: Tristan und Isolde – assistant costume designer (Oslo Opera House), Children of Killers, Swallows and Amazons – co-costume designer, Fallen, Run, Far Away – assistant costume designer, Juliet and her Romeo – assistant costume designer, Our Country’s Good, Beast and The Madness of Shakespeare (all Bristol Old Vic), My Future My Choice (school tour) and Othello (Twisted Theatre).
In 2010 Liesel Corp won Best Costume Designer at the NSDF for the production of Our Country’s Good.
Upcoming projects include: Closer Each Day (Wardrobe Theatre), Good Clown Bad Clown and Wild Girl.
NEAL CRAIG
Young Billy/Father/Band
Training: Manchester School of Theatre (MMU).
Theatre includes: The Conspirators, Henry V (Orange Tree), Beachy Head (Analogue), Don’t Shoot the Clowns (Fuel), Romeo and Juliet, Richard III (OddSocks), The Duchess of Malfi (Lazarus Theatre), The Course of True Love and Stand-up Shakespeare (1623 Theatre).
Film includes: The Boy with a Thorn in his Side and Laundry – A Short Spin. Short films: Rocket to Mars and The Meet.
Television includes: Coronation Street.
Radio includes: Germinal.
Other work includes: Neal is an associate artist and founder member of 1623 Theatre Company.
HELEN EDMUNDSON
Script
Plays include: Mother Teresa Is Dead (Royal Court) and The Clearing (Bush/ Shared Experience at the Tricycle and tour). Adaptations: Swallows and Amazons (Bristol Old Vic), War and Peace (Shared Experience/NT/ Nottingham Playhouse and tour), Coram Boy (NT/New York), Zorro (Garrick and tour), Gone to Earth (Shared Experience at the Lyric, Hammersmith and tour), Mill on the Floss (Shared Experience at the Tricycle/Ambassadors/NT and international tours), Anna Karenina (Shared Experience at the Tricycle/BAM/UK and international tours). New versions/translations: Life Is a Dream (Donmar Warehouse) and Orestes (Shared Experience at the Tricycle and tour).
Television includes: Stella and One Day.
Radio includes: The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Voyage Out and Anna of the Five Towns (BBC Radio 4).
Current projects: Helen’s new play The Heresy of Love (RSC) opens at the the Swan Theatre, Stratford, in February 2012. Helen is working on a new play, Mary Shelley, for Shared Experience and an adaptation of Thérèse Raquin for Roundabout, New York.
JAMES FARNCOMBE
Lighting Designer
James Farncombe is a freelance designer, working throughout the UK and internationally.
Theatre includes: recently, The Ladykillers (Liverpool Playhouse and Gielgud), Juno and the Paycock, Men Should Weep and Double Feature (NT), Inadmissible Evidence (Donmar Warehouse), Ghost Stories (Liverpool Playhouse, Lyric, Hammersmith, West End and Toronto – Whitelight Best Lighting Design Award, Whatsonstage Awards 2011), Swallows and Amazons, Juliet and her Romeo and Far Away (Bristol Old Vic), Lord of the Flies (Open Air, Regent’s Park), The Overcoat and Twisted Tales (Lyric, Hammersmith), The Glass Menagerie (Young Vic), The Village Bike and Wanderlust (Royal Court) and Plenty (Sheffield Crucible).
ADRIAN GARRATT
Mr Jackson/Pirate/Band
Adrian has combined violin playing and clowning for the past 15 years. He formed the theatre company Pluck in 2002, and in the process of devising three shows worked with directors Toby Sedgwick, John Fealey, Cal McCrystal, Joseph Alford and Jonathan Young.
After seven years of UK and international touring with Pluck, Adrian left to perform his one-man musical comedy show as Sid Bowfin.
ALISON GEORGE
Mrs Jackson/Pirate/Band
Training: BA Hons in Music at Nottingham University, then Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.
Theatre includes: Swing in Chess (UK tour), Mrs Milne and The Devil in Unruly Women II, Alice in Unruly Women, Cat and Lena in Voices (Quondam), cellist and ensemble in Why the Whales Came (Birmingham Stage Company), Jocasta in Oedipus (Blackeyed Theatre), Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermione and Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, Olivia in Twelfth Night (Theatre of the Dales), Kitty Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (UK tour) and Judith and Mary Magdalene in Blinded by the Light (Good Company), Fairy Bowbells in Dick Whittington (Pele Productions), Wicked Witch of the West in The Wonderful World Of Oz (Spillers), Prince Charming in Cinderella and Jill in Jack and The Beanstalk (Stage Further Productions), Faye Bourne-Arton in Murder Two Night (Wakefield Opera House), Alison in Dark and Dirty, Queen Henrietta Maria in The Silk Handkerchief, Enid and Clerk of Court in The Wind in the Willows (UK and Dubai tour) and Sue in Joe’s Jukebox Diner.
Film and television include: Emmerdale, Coronation Street, My Spy Family, Operation Good Guys III, On the Shoulders of Giants, Rough and Ready, Rough Around the Edges, Trickster, The Payoff, Achmed’s Requiem, Every Day Hurts, Lie With Me, Akheer and Eulogy.
NEIL HANNON
Music and Lyrics
Neil Hannon is a singer, lyricist and composer. Although he is best known for recording and performing as The Divine Comedy, he has also written extensively for television and film, including the music to Father Ted and The IT Crowd.
He has collaborated with everyone from Michael Nyman to Tom Jones, and his recent cricket-themed project The Duckworth Lewis Method was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award.
Swallows and Amazons is his first venture into the world of musical theatre.
AKIYA HENRY
Titty Walker
Theatre includes: The Coloured Museum (Talawa Theatre Company), The Beggar’s Opera (Open Air, Regent’s Park), Swallows and Amazons (Bristol Old Vic), Much Ado About Nothing and Henry V (RSC), Hello, Dolly! and The Tempest (Open Air, Regent’s Park), Varjak Paw (The Opera Group), Carmen Jones (Southbank Centre), Safe (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Coriolanus (Shakespeare’s Globe), The Enchanted Pig (Young Vic), Under the Black Flag, Coram Boy and Once in a Lifetime (NT), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Sheffield Crucible), Just So and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Chichester Festival Theatre), Skellig (Young Vic), Anything Goes (NT), Bintou (Arcola), Love’s Labour’s Lost (NT), The Singing Group (Chelsea Theatre), Closer to Heaven (Arts Theatre) and Into the Woods (NYMT).
Film includes: Rabbit Fever, The Best Man, The Calcium Kid, De-Lovely and The Blue Man.
Television includes: Silent Witness, Captain Mack, Casualty, Little Britain, Doctors, Tinga Tinga, GCSE Bitesize, Yo Gabba Gabba and Noddy.
Radio includes: One Two Zoo, Reality Check and The Ballad of Frankie Banks
RICHARD HOLT
John Walker
Training: ALRA, graduating in 2008.
Theatre includes: The Pillowman (New, Oxford), Bloody Poetry (White Bear), Love’s Labour’s Lost (Rose), Romantics (Keats House), Mirror Magic Market Tales (Riverside Studios), School for Scandal (Bridewell) and In Lambeth (Stephen Joseph Theatre).
Film includes: RU-486, Wrestling Yetis, Reading Papers, Goltho, The Astronaut and The Projectionist.
Radio includes: productions withthe Wireless Theatre Company and 3DHorrorfi.
Other work includes: Sony Ericsson commercial.
ROBERT INNES HOPKINS
Set and Costume Designer
Theatre includes: Goodnight Mister Tom (UK tour), Clybourne Park (Royal Court and West End), Dunsinane (RSC), Bingo (Chichester Festival) and many others.
Opera includes: Heart of Darkness (ROH2), Parsifal (Estonian National Opera), Xerxes (Stockholm Royal Opera), The Rape of Lucretia (Snape Maltings), Billy Budd, Peter Grimes and Wozzeck (Santa Fe Opera), Lohengrin (Grand Théâtre de Genève), Betrothal in a Monastery (Glyndebourne Festival) and Die Soldaten (Ruhr Triennale and Lincoln Center Festival).
Robert Innes Hopkins’s awards include Opernwelt Set Designer of the Year (2007) for Die Soldaten.
SAM KENYON
Musical Supervision/Arrangements and Orchestrations
Sam Kenyon is a writer, composer, director, arranger and performer. He studied at Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music. Alongside preparations for Swallows and Amazons he composed the music for The Glass Slipper at Northern Stage.
He co-directed and did the musical arrangements for Oh! What a Lovely War (Northern Stage and UK tour); other directing credits include Knickerbocker Glories (Union Theatre).
Performing credits include: Merrily We Roll Along (Watermill), As You Like It (Young Vic and Wyndham’s), The Othello Music and Macbeth (BAC, directed by Tom Morris) and he played Tobias in the original cast of John Doyle’s award-winning production of Sweeney Todd.
KATIE MOORE
Susan Walker
Training: Bristol Old Vic, graduating in 2010.
Theatre includes: Jane in Salad Days (Riverside Studios) and Laura in The Glass Menagerie (New Vic and Oldham Coliseum). Katie has also taken part in workshops for the NT.
Television includes: Doctors, Merlin and Misfits.
TOM MORRIS
Director
Tom Morris is Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic.
In 2011 he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for the National Theatre Broadway production of War Horse, along with co-director Marianne Elliott.
At the helm of Bristol Old Vic, Tom Morris has directed Juliet and Her Romeo and Swallows and Amazons which is playing in the West End this Christmas followed by a national tour. Tom has also overseen the development of Bristol Jam, the UK’s only festival of improvised performance, and Bristol Ferment, a programme which supports artists, as they develop their work and show it at regular intervals throughout the year.
Tom is also Associate Director at the National Theatre where he developed and co-directed Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and War Horse and co-wrote A Matter of Life and Death with Emma Rice, with whom he also wrote The Wooden Frock and Nights at the Circus for Kneehigh.
Tom was Artistic Director at Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) from 1995 to 2004 where he revolutionised the programme, oversaw a radical management restructure and led the organisation from the verge of bankruptcy to financial stability. Whilst at BAC, Tom wrote Ben Hur, Jason and the Argonauts and World Cup Final 1966 with Carl Heap and directed many shows including Newsnight the Opera, Macbeth (with Corin Redgrave) and Othello Music. At BAC, Morris also founded BAC Opera, the Festival which launched The Shout’s Tall Stories, Jerry Springer: The Opera and the hugely successful contemporary opera company Tête à Tête.
Tom was a critic and feature writer for a range of national publications, including The Times Literary Supplement, The Daily Telegraph and The Observer. Tom has also served on the boards of Complicite, the Arts Patrons’ Trust, Punchdrunk and is Patron and Founding Chair of the JMK Trust.
TOBY SEDGWICK
Director of Movement
Toby Sedgwick won a Laurence Olivier Award in 2008 (Best Theatre Choreographer) for his work on the movement and horse choreography for War Horse at the National Theatre.
He trained at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris, where he founded The Moving Picture Mime Show, which established itself as one of the innovators of a new style of physical theatre throughout the world. Since the company disbanded (1990) he has been an actor and director of movement, working with companies such as Complicite, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Exchange, Manchester and Chichester Festival Theatre.
As director of movement, theatre includes: Frankenstein (NT), Swallows and Amazons (Bristol Old Vic), Ben Hur (BAC), The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest (Royal Exchange, Manchester), The Nativity (Young Vic), The Master and Margarita, King Lear and The Government Inspector (Chichester Theatre), Bartholomew Fair and Everyman (RSC), Marat/Sade, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tintin (tour and West End), Stomp – The Lost and Found Orchestra (Brighton Festival), The 39 Steps (West End, Broadway and worldwide), Spring Awakening (Teatr Powszechny, Warsaw) and His Dark Materials (Birmingham Rep). Theatre acting credits include: Out of a House Walked a Man (NT), Harpo Marx in Animal Crackers (West End), The Play What I Wrote (UK tour), The Father in War Horse and Trinculo in The Tempest (Royal Exchange).
Film includes: Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, 28 Days Later and Sunshine.
Film acting credits include: 28 Days Later, Laisser Passer, Vacuums, Shrooms and Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang.
Toby is currently working again with Danny Boyle on the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games and War Horse on Broadway, in Toronto and on USA tour.
ANDREW SKEET
Additional Arrangements
Andrew Skeet is a composer for television and film and one of London’s busiest conductors and arrangers.
Since studying at UEA and the Royal College of Music, Andrew has scored more than 60 television documentaries, dramas and films and recorded with many major artists. He joined forces with Neil Hannon and The Divine Comedy in 2004, touring and recording three albums.
Recent projects include producing and conducting an album of videogame music for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducting and orchestrating the score for new release The Awakening starring Rebecca Hall and Dominic West, and composing the score for How to Re-establish a Vodka Empire, an award-winning documentary feature film which premiered at the London Film Festival 2011.
Andrew lives in Twickenham with his wife and daughter.
HILARY TONES
Mother/Band
Training: Central School of Speech and Drama.
Theatre includes: A Small Family Business (Clwyd Theatr Cymru), Original Sin (Haymarket, Basingstoke), The Lady in the Van (Salisbury Playhouse), Romeo and Juliet (Theatre of Memory, Middle Temple Hall), Pericles, Measure for Measure and Macbeth (Shakespeare’s Globe), Mary Stuart and Shirley Valentine (Derby Playhouse), Absolutely (Perhaps!) (Wyndham’s), The Magistrate and She’s in Your Hands (Royal Exchange, Manchester), Twelfth Night (Oxford Stage Company), The Visit (Chichester Festival), The Fire Raisers and Liberation of Skopje (Riverside Studios), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Dramski Theatre, Skopje, Macedonia), The Three Musketeers (Sheffield Crucible), An Ideal Husband (Lyric, Belfast), Private View (Rokoko Theatre, Prague), Salt of the Earth, Woyzeck and Can’t Stand up for Falling Down (Hull Truck) and Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Have (RSC).
Film includes: The Great Expectation of Robert Carmichael.
Television includes: Wire in the Blood, Criminal Justice, Casualty, The Bill, Holby City, Doctors, Judge John Deed, Tenth Kingdom, Body Story, Silent Witness, Persuasion, Coronation Street and Gaudy Night.
JON TRENCHARD
Policeman/Old Billy/Band
Staff Musical Director Training: London Academy of Performing Arts.
Theatre includes: Lady Anne in Richard III, Dromio of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors, Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jessica in The Merchant of Venice, Curio in Twelfth Night and Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew, understudying and playing Portia in The Merchant of Venice, and Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew (Propeller), Squealer in Animal Farm (Clwyd Theatr Cymru), Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor (Stafford Gatehouse), Oh What a Lovely War (Northern Stage), Sunset Boulevard (Watermill), Great Expectations (New Vic), Mack & Mabel (Watermill, Criterion and UK tour), title role in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 (Belfast Festival), Peter Pan (Oxford Playhouse), Todd! The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Kabosh Theatre), Leonardo’s Last Supper (Open Air, Regent’s Park), La Ronde (Pentameters), several pantomimes for Qdos, New World and Jordan Productions, and Puck in Benjamin Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Queen Elizabeth Hall).
Film includes: The Da Vinci Code.
Television includes: My Family.
SOPHIE WALLER
Peggy Blackett
Training: Birmingham School of Acting.
Theatre includes: Dolly and Countess Vronsky in Anna Karenina (Arcola) – Sophie also composed and performed the piano musical arrangements for the production, Mopsa in The Winter’s Tale, The Witch in Into the Woods (Crescent Theatre, Birmingham), Princess in Jack and the Beanstalk (South Holland Centre, Spalding) and The Sandman in Hansel and Gretel Opera (tour).
Film includes: Turbulence.
Sophie is delighted to be making her West End stage debut in Swallows and Amazons.
STEWART WRIGHT
Roger Walker
Theatre includes: The Department of Smelling Pistakes (UK tour), Swallows and Amazons (Bristol Old Vic), Muscle (Bristol Old Vic/Hull Truck and UK tour), Misconception (Edinburgh Festival), The Nothing Show (Bristol Old Vic and UK tour), Earls of the Court (Edinburgh Festival), Neville’s Island (Birmingham Rep), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bristol Old Vic), The Madness of George III (West Yorkshire Playhouse), All My Sons (NT), Love and the Art of War (King’s Head), An Audience with a Queen (Riverside Studios), Jackie (Queen’s) and The Magistrate (Chichester and Savoy).
Film includes: Incendiary, Out of Here, World of Wrestling, A Good Year, Best Man, If Only, Intermedia. Ali G Inda House, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Dog Eat Dog, High Heels and Low Lifes, Cucciolo and Fierce Creatures.
Television includes: Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, Love Soup, Spooks, The Bearded Ladies, Directed by Jim Leonard, Dirty Filthy Love, Doc Martin, I Saw You, The Bill, Black Books, Smack the Pony, Bonkers, Seven Second Delay, Ready When You Are Mr Mcgill..., Rescue Me, Celeb, Murder in Mind, Wild West, Armadillo, Coupling, Lee Evans: So What Now?, Doctors, My Hero, The Vicar of Dibley, World of Pub, Heartburn Hotel, People Like Us, The Alexei Sayle Show, Chalk and The Round Tower.
Radio includes: co-wrote and starred in Earls of the Court and Strangers on Trains (BBC Radio 4).
Other work includes: Stewart has a live-action television project in development with Aardman and is part of offbeat impro troupe The Hot Air Baboons. In 2007 he founded Nothing Productions.
Booking Info
Tue - Sat eves 7.30pm
Wed, Thu & Sat mats 2.15pm
£2 off top three prices Tue - Thu eves and mats
Groups 10+
10% off Tue – Thu eves & mats
Schools 10+
£8.50 per pupil, one free teacher with every 10 paid
Half price tickedts for under 16s on top three prices for all performances
Gallery
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Akiya Henry
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Akiya Henry
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Akiya Henry
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Amy Booth-Steel and Celia Adams
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Celia Adams
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Richard Standing
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Rosalie Craig, Stewart Wright, Stuart McLouglin, Akiya
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Stewart Wright, Akiya Henry, Katie Moore, Richard Holt
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Katie Moore, Richard Holt, Stewart Wright, Akiya Henry
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Celia Adams, Sophie Waller, Stewart Wright, Katie Moore, Richard Holt, Akiya Henry
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Akiya Henry
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Richard Holt, Akiya Henry, Katie Moore, Stewart Wright
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Sophie Waller, Stewart Wright, Greg Barnett, Celia Adams
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Akiya Henry
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Akiya Henry, Richard Holt, Stewart Wright, Katie Moore
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Swallows and Amazons in Rehearsal
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Swallows and Amazons in Rehearsal
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Stewart Wright, Sophie Waller, Akiya Henry, Richard Holt, Celia Adams, Katie Moore
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Akiya Henry, Stewart Wright, Katie Moore, Greg Barnett, Celia Adams, Richard Holt
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Akiya Henry, Richard Holt, Hilary Tones, Stewart Wright, Katie Moore
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Celia Adams, Sophie Waller
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Swallows and Amazons in Rehearsal
