Wednesday 5 September 2012

And Now For Something Completely Different

Oh Wow!

If you've been wondering how come the posts suddenly stopped mid-Edinburgh Fringe, wonder no more.
The fact is we've been up to our ears in negotiations to bring the show to the West End. And we are going to do it!!  This is a huge leap for the play and for all of us and we are just thrilled to the ends of our hair and toes to have got the chance to join the ranks of those who've managed the fabled 'London Transfer'!!!

Big thank-yous to our partners in crime Leof Kingsford-Smith and his family at CW Productions for bringing us in on the deal and to the Arts Theatre in London's West End (sorry, I am likely to keep repeating 'West End' for some time, now. 'West End'... there I go again!) for having enough faith both in his show 'The Madness of King Lear'  and in ours to invite us for a three-week run in this amazingly friendly and mind-bendingly West End (oops) space. Hey, that was a big sentence!

Anyway, all this has kept me from telling you what a fabulous time we had right up to the end of Edinburgh with more really lovely reviews from Richard Stamp at Fringe Guru and Nick Awde at The Stage.  And then we had more fun at Stratford, where it was such a blast to do the play in the garden of Shakespeare's daughters' actual house! Though we got drowned on the way down, the weather got onside and gave us a
sunny, warm evening and a very decent and wonderfully appreciative audience. That set us up for Tuesday's show (we are up to 28 August, now) at The London Theatre, which was a blast. An audience of mainly friends and family and a fabulous opportunity to see just how small a stage we could work on without tripping over each other! Our director, Roz Riley, and lighting designer, Stephen Dean, worked wonders re-blocking and re-lighting everything to work in the new space while the wonderful Harry Denford, who runs the theatre, couldn't have been more accommodating and supportive.

Right! Back to the West End. The double bill is called Double Bill. Clever, no? You spotted the pun on The Bard's name right away, yes?? Oh do keep up in the back, there!!!!  We open on 16 October and run to 3 November. As soon as tix go on sale, I'll pop a link up on here and also to the Double Bill site, when we have it, and all kinds of other fancy stuff like Facebook pages and Twitter hashtags....

The other fancy thing we are working on is a crowd funding effort to raise some of the mega-bucks we need to do this transfer. Because of the really short time we have to make this happen, we can't go out for corporate sponsorship or government grants etc but we do need help to get from our Fringe-dwelling selves to the majesty and superlativeness of the West End (West End West End West End - sorry!). Soooooo stand by for pleas for pledges and do, please ('nother pun) help us if you can.

Never though I'd write this but here we go....

See you in the West End!!!!

Cheers,
Kath

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