Amateur Players of Sherborne’s spring production features three plays from Noel Coward’s ten one-act play cycle titled ‘Tonight at 8.30’
The plays showcase Coward's talents as a playwright and his trademark panache for sparkling, sophisticated, witty dialogue. “There is a little something for everyone here”, says John Crabtree, director and set designer and who last spring directed ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ as the Players part in the RSC's Open Stages project. “Themes range from high farce to doomed romance and span the full range of Coward’s writing.”
Hands Across the Sea concerns a socialite whose drawing room is a revolving door of old and new friends and thus a natural set-up for a case of mistaken identities.
In Still Life after a chance meeting of a housewife and a married physician in a railway-station buffet, they embark on an affair, subsequently immortalised on screen as Brief Encounter.
A lovingly cynical tribute to the music hall, ’Red Peppers’ features a performing couple whose onstage choreography and off-stage marriage leave something to be desired.
Tickets: £8, students £5, group bookings 10+ £7.50 available early April from Marsh’s, Cheap Street, Sherborne and The Abbey Shop, Abbey Close, Sherborne.