Autumn 2008

JENNY AGUTTER, HELEN BRADBURY, JONATHAN ELSOM, CHARLES KAY, TREVOR MARTIN, ANDREW PEPPER and TIMOTHY WEST
in

LETHE

A farce by David Garrick

preceded by

SAM BUTLER & CO.

An unvarnished revue of 18th century actors and audiences

Friday 12th - Sunday 14th September
Time: 7.30pm
Tickets: £15 - £60

Lethe and Sam Butler & Co. Original music arranged and played by Jeremy Barlow.
Produced by Iain Mackintosh. Directed by Timothy West.

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.

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.

Saturday's performance is sponsored by Turner & Townsend

These performances are mounted by Georgian Theatre Royal Productions, and sponsored by Turner Townsend, in conjunction with the Society for Theatre Research's 60th Anniversary Conference:
THE GEORGIAN PLAYHOUSE and its Continental Counterparts, 1750-1850. Saturday 12th & Sunday 13th September
A limited number of places for the conference are available to the public, with special concessionary rates for Friends of the Georgian Theatre Royal.
Please visit www.georgianplayhouse.org.uk

Have you also considered:

TATE WILKINSON

Sunday 23rd November
more details

ROMEO AND JULIET

Thursday 27th November
more details

UNDER MILKWOOD

Friday 28th November
more details

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