Mark Hayward Archives - North West End UK

The Importance of Being Earnest – Speke Hall

25Jul

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

The Importance of Being Earnest – Speke Hall

The challenge of Oscar Wilde is not in the words but ensuring the performance does them justice. There were no such fears with director and founding member Mark Hayward’s laugh-out loud production which delights from the off. As butler Lane (Hannah Pryal) prepares tea at the London home of dandy Algernon Moncrief (James Alston) there is a hint of the fun and frolics to follow when his friend John Worthing (Harry Drummond) arrives, explaining that when he tires of life in the country looking after his teenage ward, he escapes to enjoy the high life of the city under the guise of seeing his wayward brother, ‘Ernest’. Algernon, in turn, regales him with his exploits of escaping the city in reverse fashion. Algernon’s aunt, Lady Bracknell (Madeline Hatt), arrives with her daughter, Gwendole...

The Comedy of Errors – Speke Hall

A Shakespearean comedy set around two rival states and two sets of mismatched twins is brought to life in this bright adaptation from Steve Purcell, who also directs, with its central theme of mistaken identity the perfect vehicle for Mark Hayward’s production to explore a number of popular theatre forms in this consistently funny farce that piles error upon error at an increasingly frantic pace. If the challenge of the doubling up of not one but two sets of twins whilst keeping the audience on-board as the only ones who know what is happening on stage wasn’t enough, throw in an open-air venue, forecasted bad weather, and plane disruption from the adjacent airport, and I had everything crossed for the much-reduced cast of four playing all of the roles. I needn’t have worried as with ...

Bleak House: A Radio Play – The Pantaloons Go Online

Charles Dickens first penned the satirical Bleak House as a 20-episode serial following which it was published as a novel in 1853. With its array of characters connected through the tale of a family waiting in vain to inherit money from a disputed fortune in the settlement of a lawsuit that has gone on for so long that no one knows what it’s about anymore, and despite criticism from the legal profession, it was eventually to influence judicial review and reform in the 1870s. Considered by many to be Dickens greatest work and the forerunner of the detective novel, given the abuse of power evident in recent times – PPE anyone? – who better than the critically acclaimed The Pantaloons to resurrect this indictment of the self-serving public life enshrined in Parliament, provincial aristocra...