A
MAD WORLD MY MASTERS
Darlington Civic Theatre
Tuesday
14 to Saturday 18 April 2015
English Touring Theatre presents the Royal
Shakespeare Company production at Darlington Civic Theatre, Tuesday 14 to
Saturday 18 April.
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The cast of A Mad World My
Masters.
Photo by Manuel Harlan
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Thomas
Middleton, one of Shakespeare's greatest playwriting contemporaries and close
collaborator on several plays, is most famous for writing two of the finest
seventeenth-century tragedies, The Changeling and Women Beware Women.
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Nicholas Prasad as Master
Muchly-Minted and
Charlie Archer as Master
Whopping-Prospect
in A Mad World My Masters. Photo
by Manuel Harlan
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But
he also created a brilliant array of witty and entertaining comedies set in
early Jacobean London, which explore with relish a cutthroat urban world, where
the "best art" of the inhabitants is "to dissemble well". A
Mad World, My Masters is one of the most inventive of these London comedies.
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The cast of A Mad World My
Masters.
Photo by Manuel Harlan
|
The
play takes its audience on an exhilarating ride through a series of plots and
counterplots, with surprises around every corner and some clever comic plotting
and dialogue.
The
action weaves together two contrasted stories of trickery and deceit (one
involving money, the other adultery), in which those who think themselves most
cunning - and who may indeed seem to be so - do not always win the race.
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The cast of A Mad World My
Masters.
Photo by Manuel Harlan
|
Director
Sean Foley has skilfully updated the action to take place in London, Soho... 1956. Glamour rubs up
against filth, and likes it. The posh mix with musicians and racketeers and a
dashingly penniless bachelor, in need of quick cash and a good time, finds he
has to live on his wits.
Becoming
a con-man to fool his rich uncle, he variously becomes a lord, a high class
call girl, and – God forbid – a poor actor. But a beautiful Soho tart is also on the
scam: a whore to some, a religious instructor to others, and a debutante in
need of an eligible bachelor to yet more.
A
fabulous cast has been assembled including Joe Bannister, Ellie Beavan, Ben
Deery, Dennis Herdman, Ian Redford and Sarah Ridgeway.
A
Mad World My Masters is
disgracefully entertaining and fun with a capital F.
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Lois Meleri-Jones as Escort in
A Mad World My Masters.
Photo by Manuel Harlan
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Special Events
Free
pre show talk Tuesday 5.45pm, limited availability,
advance booking required.
Free
post show talk Wednesday - Stay behind after the show to take part in a Q&A
with some of the cast. Booking not necessary.
Education
workshops also available.
On The Web:
Tickets:
A Mad World My Masters is at Darlington Civic
Theatre from Tuesday 14 to Saturday 18 April. Tickets* are priced from £17.40.
Recommended age 12+.
To book contact the Box Office on 01325 486 555 or
visit www.darlingtoncivic.co.uk
*Includes
a £1 restoration levy
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