Happy Anniversary!

A Year Is A Long Time In Anybody's Book...

 ...and it is a year to the day that I last put finger to keyboard and wrote something here. 

A week maybe a long time in politics but a year in theatre is a veritable lifetime! And lot has happened in the last twelvemonth...

The reasons for the lack of news (for those of you that care!) are mainly personal and manifold...book published, play written and published and performed and award won and professional theatre company formed, launched and touring. Plug over.

As to the Inn, well we have gone from strength to strength and after 2015's mini-tour of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and the magnificent production of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' at Dartmouth Castle, we launched into rehearsing a touring production of 'Twelfth Night' and started the search for the 2016 Dartmouth Shakespeare Week cast of 'Romeo and Juliet'. We never sleep.

Top: A promenade performance of the Dream as part of the 2015 tour
Above: some of the cast from the 1950's-set Merry Wives.

We are, as a company, inordinately proud of all our achievements over the past year, not least of which is to see the touring production of 'Twelfth Night' and the DSW production of 'Romeo and Juliet' get in to the Tripadvisor top ten must-see shows to celebrate this year of #Shakespeare400.

We are still affiliated to the RSC for the rest of this year and rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet are well underway, with workshops in voice and text and swordplay on the menu for the pretty-much all new cast, many of whom are not only new to the Castle experience, but new to Will too.

This year's director is the wonderful Jon Miles, who, you may recall, gave such a moving and special performance in the title role of King Lear, back in 2013.

Jon Miles as King Lear in the 2013 production.

The opening night of the Twelfth Night tour - which is taking the play to some slightly more unusual venues - was at Duckaller Farm in Dawlish...and it was a sell-out. Great news for us and for the Roz and Keith who run Duckaller; they took a punt on Shakespeare, and us, and it was a huge success!

Next stop for the tour (1st & 2nd June) is Torre Abbey in Torquay, a 13th century monastery with bags of atmosphere; it's an almost-perfect setting for any Shakespearean play, and we really hope to be doing something on a more regular basis with the team at Torre.

Then we go to Manor Gardens in Exmouth (3rd June), to be part of the Exmouth Festival. Another first for us and for the Festival.

Off to the Avon Mill Garden Centre on 18th June (said the venues were unusual!) for another first-time venue for Will and us and Cheryl, who owns Avon Mill. This one's already sold out, so we must be doing something right!

And the tour winds up, as it did last year, at Pecorama, Beer, on 25th June.

Tickets for any of these remaining shows can be found here but if you want to see us at Pecorama, you need to go here - but don't delay, they're going fast; and I know everybody says that...but it's true!

A couple of shots from the Dress rehearsal for Twelfth Night, which took place at Hole Farm...and no, Feste doesn't usually have a dog, but he was a special guest appearance!

As you can see, it's been a pretty busy year, and after Romeo and Juliet, who knows what the future may hold!

We have yet to reach a decision on the 2017 production, but we have a few ideas and, if the poll we took is anything to go by, then the front-runners are 'The Winter's Tale' and 'Othello'...but we shall see.

And as for a tour at the end of 2016 and on into 2017? Who knows. It takes a huge amount of work to organise and the people who are involved in getting it all out there have other stuff going on as well. But it is something we enjoy, despite the groans! 

If you'd like to buy tickets for Romeo and Juliet

just click on the poster above and it will whisk

you away to our website, where you can find links to 

the box office...and have a look at some of the 

wonderful pictures from Merry Wives and 

all our previous productions.

And we won't leave it another year until we catch up with you!!

Promise.

Feel Free To Move...But Not Too Much!

The Merry Wives of Windsor...the musical?
Funny, isn't it? The more 'modern' we become the more traditional and, for want of a better word, Shakespearean we find ourselves being.
We really are a very lucky bunch of thesps because last night we were delighted to welcome to rehearsals (for the big finale!) our choreographer, Suzie, and the man who's writing the music especially for this production, Mr. Ben Malley.

Without giving too much away - and to clarify the 'ancient and modern' comment above - there is a section towards the end of the play that entails Herne the Hunter, faeries, hobgoblins and more mayhem. Ben has created a soundscape for the opening section and set some of Will's words to a lovely tune for Sally to sing. And as modern as it sounds, there is a wonderful feeling of the traditional music that could be heard in the Globe when Will was plying his trade.

Suzie worked with pretty much the entire cast on getting the traffic from A to B, without disrupting the flow of the words and the feel of the poetry, and on to C. There was initial choreography for the final curtain-call song and dance, which reprises the Sal Song, and also reminds us that this was the way that performances ended at the Globe (The Swan, The Rose etc etc). So it is a modern dress version of the play but with real Shakespearean values. It's already feeling like a classic!

Working on the 'let's torment Falstaff' scene

And there is definite debt of gratitude to paid to the entire cast and all the practitioners from last year's production too. As you recall, it was a Commedia dell'arte rendering of 'The Taming of the Shrew', which required some real physicality and stepping-out-of-the-comfort-zone from all involved. 
And the confidence gained whilst working on that has spilled over into this year's rehearsals with a vengeance! 

The levels of commitment and skill were sky-high; everyone worked together (as they should) and had a brilliant time transferring Suzie's ideas to their performances and the scene as a whole. The bloke in the front had the hardest time though. You've got no idea how tiring it is to just sit around and watch everyone else dance about a bit.

Dancing about a bit!

Wives has been described, not only by me, as anarchic (not showing respect for official or accepted rules and behaviour - thank you Oxford English!) and it is all of that, but it is also fabulously funny, a little rude (quite a lot rude, actually) and, in places quite scary and cruel. The end scenes that we were rehearsing last night, whilst having a funny element, also included some of the things an Elizabethan/Jacobean audience would have found remarkably scary and unnerving.  

(Not dissimilar to the Witches in Macbeth; we may not find them particularly frightening, but back then? And the same applies to the faeries in The Dream and spirits in The Tempest. Other-worldly stuff was something you might have poo-pooed then...but you still made the sign of the eye to ward them off!)

The comedy in Wives is derived from a lecherous old soldier trying to have his way with two virtuous wives and their revenge upon him for his crass belief that they could ever find him remotely attractive. Yet. Yet the comedy ending involves something darker than that - the complete humiliation of the man using the scariest (at that time!) means possible. Add a bit of torture and pinching and you've got the perfect Elizabethan comedy! Here's a thing: within the Shakespearean canon, The Merchant of Venice is classed as comedy. Really?

Chase me!

'Where's Bede? Go you, and where you find a maid

That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,

Raise up the organs of her fantasy;

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy:

But those as sleep and think not on their sins,

Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides and shins.'

Not only does the scene scare, it is also reinforces the religious message of the time: pray, be virtuous and all will be well but if you don't repent your sins, well...just read the last two lines again. And these lines are spoken by a vicar!

Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.

Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:

Where fires thou find'st unraked and hearths unswept,

There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:

Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.

Even the faeries and their queen won;t let you get away with it! Then comes the song that sums it all up.

Fie on sinful fantasy!

Fie on lust and luxury!

Lust is but a bloody fire,

Kindled with unchaste desire,

Fed in heart, whose flames aspire

As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.

Pinch him, fairies, mutually;

Pinch him for his villany;

Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,

Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.

Personally, I feel quite sorry for poor old Falstaff...but I would.

Should have gone to Specsavers!

Finally, this is our Suzie, working the socks off of the cast and getting, we hope, the results both she and Jilly want. 

See the final results of all the hard work at Dartmouth Castle from 4th August. You can get your tickets from here.

We're Back In The (Rehearsal) Room!

Well well well...it has been a while, hasn't it?
But, as intimated, we are back in the rehearsal room and working as hard (if not harder) as ever.
After the resounding success of Dartmouth Shakespeare Week in 2014, we were always going to be hard-pushed to come up with something equally as adventurous and entertaining but also something that pushed our creative limits and buttons. 

As you know, we have a committee that works incredibly hard during our 'down' time, to bring together all the components that comprise a production. And one of the things they do is, whilst one production is rehearsing and getting put in place, they are deciding what the following year's play will be.

And so it was while The Shrew was coming together, they were chewing the fat as to what we would do in 2015...and who would direct. This time round, they asked the person they wanted to direct to have a look at three plays and make a couple of decisions: A) Do you want to direct? and B) If the answer to A) is yes then which of these do you fancy?

A) YES!
B) The Merry Wives of Windsor.

And here we are, back in the rehearsal room with Jill Brock at the helm steering us through another first for the Company. A modern dress production of Shakespeare's ridiculously anarchic comedy.
You may remember Jill from previous productions...

Jill as Katherina, with Rich Turley as Petruchio,
in the 2014 production of
The Taming of the Shrew

Jill as Regan in King Lear - 2013

Jill has managed something quite astounding: she dragged us into the 20th century with her vision of The Merry Wives of Windsor. The play was written in or around 1594 and tells the convoluted tale of Sir John Falstaff - low on cash, self-esteem and options - and his plan to woo two wives and have his way with them and their husband's money. There are plenty of other things going on as well, in typical Shakespearean fashion. The young lovers who are being thwarted by parental wishes; the suitors (an idiotic young nobleman and a mad French doctor) both vying for the hand of the young lady; a scheming go-between in the shape of Mistress Quickly; Falstaff's side-kicks, Pistol and Nim, adding to the chaos and the wives themselves, along with their husbands, all plotting and planning to achieve their own ends.

Jill wanted to do something radically different for this production - so she decided to set it in the 1950's...so it's modern-dress, but not that modern: one step at a time, please!
Along with her assistant director, Lynne Deller, Jill's guiding everyone in the cast through the complex story and enthusing them all with the way she sees things coming together. We have a real live choreographer for various scenes (I shall get shot if I give too much away) and there will be specially commissioned music, performed by a live band that will be on stage for the performances.
And for those who love all the spectacular costumes that are usually associated with one of our productions, fear not! The costumes this year will be of an equally spectacular nature, just from a different era.

James Osben (Reverend Huw Evans) and
Max Brandt (Sir John Flastaff) back in the room.

Shaunagh Radcliffe and Gina Carter as
Mistresses Page and Ford...or is it Ford and Page?

Gil Garland (Justice Shallow) and James Osben.

And, as ever, everybody is having a huge amount of fun getting to grips with the script and all the insanity it entails.
Once again we have come up with something, for us, that is very different and something that, we hope, the audience will love...they haven't let us down in all the years we've been doing this.

We are also more than little proud of the fact that, once again, we are affiliated to the Royal Shakespeare Company and also that we have, since last year, acquired our very own patron.

Michael Corbidge - senior voice and text coach with the RSC

Michael Corbidge worked with us on The Shrew, offering invaluable insights to the text and helping the cast to maximise their vocal skills and presentation for the massive space that is our performance area up at Dartmouth Castle. And at the end of that process, not only did we have a magnificent show, we had a wonderful new patron!




And Michael will be working with us again this year, running workshops for the cast and working with individual members to hone their characterisations and give the entire production another special facet.




  








It really is a very exciting time for the company as a whole. We have some amazing new young performers joining us for the first time this year as well as some old friends renewing their acquaintance with us, including the lovely Jenny Gould, who has the unenviable task of over-seeing the costumes for the Merry Wives production.




Get your tickets for The Wives by going HERE!

AND IN OTHER NEWS...

Not only are we back in the room for The Wives but, for our sins, we are back there for a final run at The Dream.
After a huge amount of too-ing and fro-ing (which is another story entirely, and one too long and boring to go into here!) we are also doing a special, one-off performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream on 27th June at Pecorama in East Devon...it's just outside Beer. So not only is Jill having to wrestle and wrangle with all the complexities of The Wives, she's also refreshing her memory (along with everyone else involved) for playing Titania.

You can see on the poster where to get tickets for this last ever production of The Dream (last ever by us, at least!) - so if you missed it last year at Hazelwood House or The Bike Shed or the special charity gig at Hole Farm, NOW is the time to rectify that error and come and enjoy a a brilliant production in a really magnificent setting! Bring a picnic and get carried away by it all! 

AND FINALLY...

You may recall, early in the blog, that the committee make a decision about the next year's production while working on the present one? So, just to whet your appetite for 2016 - the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death - here is what we will be presenting then. No director as yet, we await the word from that person. It's a big decision for them to make: time-consuming and life-consuming. Watch this space.

The Taming of the Shrew - What's Not To Like?

The Lovers - featuring Gil Garland as Hortensio/Licio; James Osben as Lucentio/Cambio; Sally Feetenby as Bianca with Emma, Ellie, Rheanne, Fred and (another) James in close attendance!

The Taming of the Shrew - A Small Sample!

A short, hand-held extract from this year's production, courtesy of Janie, this year's director, who saw fit to bring along a video camera.

Kate is played by Jill Brock, Petruchio by Rich Turley, and other actors featured are, in no particular order, Nick Crosley, Ernie Wingeatt and Ben Hamilton. 



We had a fabulous week at Dartmouth Castle, despite having to use the church on the opening night and having the second-half rained upon on the final night. And there will be more pictures and a proper catch-up in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, have fun.

What Did You Say The Dog Was Called..?

It's been nearly a month since the last communique from the front line...sorry 'bout that, but there's something happening up at the Castle that requires our attention!
Busy, busy, busy! And the chances are that this will be the last blog until we've knocked 'em dead between 5th and 9th August. It would be brilliant if I could write something, and send it, from back-stage at the show, but it's a question of signal? What signal? Which kinda puts paid to that notion!

Never act with children and/or animals. Well, we've got both! Inanimate animals, sort of, and very animated children, which is just fantastic!

Freya, Ben and Isaac, just taking a break from being Servant's.

As to animals - we've got a couple of surprises up our sleeve but trying to get a real dog on stage, while not impossible (we did it in The Dream in '07 and Much Ado in '09) isn't the easiest thing to do, particularly when you're trying to act. Nigh -on impossible when your canine star is trying to get off the stage to the packet of crisps in the front row! But we think we've solved the problem with this little fella:

To quote an oft used line, 'It's a puppet!' - or in this instance, a stuffed toy. This is Bianca's lap-dog, named in fun by some idiot (!), who was trying to think of the most unlikely name for a dog like this. And it's stuck. Allow me to introduce Vomit the Poodle. 

Sorry.

But Sally, who is playing Bianca, is using him to great effect and managing not to get distracted by the various (hilarious) noises coming from the rest of the cast.

 

Here's Sally with her new best friend.

Please note the laughter. This is the 

ingredient that has seemed to increase in leaps and bounds since we started rehearsing the touring production of The Dream last year. Not that we weren't always a pretty scatty, happy bunch, but the fun-factor seems to have cranked up to eleven since that production.

  

And here are a few more shots of the cast rehearsing, just to make the point!

To top it all, the rehearsals this year have been bathed in glorious sunshine pretty much all time - which also makes everybody a lot more cheerful! 

Apart from sunshine, there has been another aspect of rehearsing this year that has added another layer of gloss to everything. We have been really privileged to have had the chance to work with one of the countries (if not the world's!) greatest text and voice coaches. And boy, have we had a blast!

 Michael Corbidge has taught us so much in the time he spent with us that it really is difficult to explain the effect he has had upon the whole company.

Working with humour he has shown us just where and what we need to work on. He has opened up an amazing reservoir of talent, enthusiasm and energy in the company that, although it was there before, we just weren't tapping into it effectively. And we've only just started this exploration.

Here are some shots of all us working and having a laugh with Michael.

 

There have been other amazing people from beyond the company too, who have all added to our knowledge and understanding of what it is we are striving for. We learn all the time, all of us, even the teachers. So huge thanks to Jane King, Gareth Ballyn, our own Lynne Deller and Janie, our director, who pulls all these disparate threads together and helps us weave them into something magical.

We've even managed to grab some really important social time too, albeit at a Sunday rehearsal. Our Trooch (Rich) arrived with all sorts of goodies in the boot of his car and proceeded to set up shop and tempt everybody with food and drink!!

At least it was us with a barbeque on stage and not a group of spectators, who did exactly that one year...half an hour before we were due to go on stage! Ah, the stories we could tell...

James and Sam going all hunter-gatherer 

The tribe tucking in.

Trooch having a real problem making decisions!

So all in all, this year is shaping up to be one of the most inventive and exciting Dartmouth Shakespeare Week's thus far. And that is all down to the wonderful bunch of people who are involved.

Thanks in large amounts are, once again, due to Keith Gould who took these fabulous pictures and whose work is hugely appreciated by everyone in the company. He does it every year, and every year he comes up trumps!

And also this year, lest we forget, we have a really talented group of musicians involved, who will be performing live during the production. Simon Fox (who played Oswald in 'King Lear' last year) has written some beautiful music for the lovers and, under the musical direction of Jess Heywood, everything in that department is shaping up brilliantly...they also have responsibility for the sound effects. Oh yes, we have those too!

Here they are rehearsing and having a conflab with Janie about choice of incidentals

Whilst it's not a pre-requisite that people who join us, in any capacity, have to be mad, or liberally supported by alcohol or even come in disguise, it sometimes happens. The names have not been changed to protect anybody!

James, thinking about auditioning for 'Notre Dame de Paris'...probably.

Rich, demonstrating his Mr Gumby impersonation, sans handkerchief.

Clare, thoroughly enjoying a small libation and wondering if one more would hurt.

This is NOT Shahar, he is NOT associated, in any way, with these people. Honestly.

Given the time, we hope to have another blog or two up before we go 'live' but under the circumstances, we'll all probably under the table somewhere, wondering what the heck just happened!!

Here's hoping to see you all at the castle sometime between 5th and 9th August. 

If you can't make it, keep your eyes peeled here or on the web-site. 

www.theinntheatrecompany.co.uk