SAM BUTLER & CO / LETHE (September 12 - 14, 2008)
Directed by Timothy West
CAST:
Jenny Agutter .... Fanny Kemble (Juliet)
Helen Bradbury .... Unknown
Jonathan Elsom .... Unknown
Charles Kay .... Edmund Kean, Aesop
Trevor Martin .... George Cooke
Andrew Pepper .... American Actor (Romeo)
Timothy West .... Lord Chalkstone |  |
SYNOPSIS:
Sam Butler & Co celebrates the world of actor manager Samuel Butler, who built this theatre in 1788, and his actors and actresses who played here and who strolled in all weathers to Ulverston, Whitby and the other towns on the circuit. You will meet Dickens' Vincent Crummles and his "infant phenomenon", a sword and snake swallower, the celebrated and starving George Cooke who pawned himself for a bottle of ale and a plate of cheese, and you will join in the singing of patriotic anti-French songs which were sung by audiences here until 1815.
Lethe is a short satirical "afterpiece", an entertainment which concluded the evening's entertainment in Georgian times. This one delighted audiences at Garrick's Drury Lane on hundreds of evenings between 1740 and 1776. It has never been revived, probably because it is so short and requires rich cameo performances by a cast of mortals who, by Pluto's special dispensation, have been allowed down to the Underworld to drink of the waters of Lethe to forget one thing of their own choice and then to return to the World above.
PHOTOS & MEDIA:
TRIVIA:
• Charles Kay, Jenny Agutter and Timothy West have all collaborated on several previous stage projects together.
LINKS:
http:// Official Georgian Theatre Royal Site
http:// Official Georgian Playhouse Site
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