Spring / Summer Season 2007
The Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds presents
Restorign the Repertoire
Rehearsed readings of forgotten gems from the Georgian theatrical repertoire
Friday 2nd March • 7.30pm
Tickets: £5 - £10
It is well-known that the Theatre Royal, Richmond is a rare and outstanding
example of a Georgian playhouse.
But what plays did it house when it first opened its doors in 1788?
Few people have read, let alone seen, any of the thousands of new plays which delighted audiences in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over the next three months the Theatre Royal Bury’s company of actors present a series of rehearsed readings of little known theatrical gems, all dating from the 1700s.
A Bold Stroke for a Wife
by Mrs. Susannah Centlivre.
First performed at Lincoln Inn Fields, London in 1718.
This wonderful play is perhaps the finest example of Centlivre's masterful plotting of comic intrigue. The soldier Feignwell and Anne Lovely are in love, but their path to the altar is blocked by her guardians Sir Philip Modelove who has ‘May in his fancy and dress, but December in his face and heels’; Periwinkle ‘a kind of virtuoso – a silly half-witted fellow’; Tradelove ‘a fellow that would out-lie the devil for the advantage of stock’ and Centlivre’s magnificent creation – ‘the very rigid Quaker’ Obadiah Prim; each of whom has a different view of what sort of husband would make the right match. The satirical bite of this sparkling comedy is directed at Tory respectability, religious propriety and capitalist speculative greed.
PACKAGE DEAL! Book for all three play readings and save 5%.