Cast

Synopsis

Keen to boost his flagging career, fading Hollywood action hero Jefferson Steel arrives in England to play King Lear in Stratford – only to find that this is not the birthplace of The Bard, but a sleepy village. And instead of Kenneth Branagh and Dame Judi Dench, the cast is a bunch of amateurs trying to save their theatre from developers. Jefferson’s monstrous ego, vanity and insecurity are tested to the limit by the enthusiastic am-dram thespians. As acting worlds collide and Jefferson’s career implodes, he discovers some truths about himself – along with his inner Lear!

Directors Notes

Over the last few months, people have asked what I’m doing next. “Directing A Bunch of Amateurs”, I’ve replied. Cue sniggers. But as Jefferson Steel says in the play: “Nothing could be further from the truth” and in fact everybody involved in the production is offering considerable skill and commitment to the cause. The play is tricky: seventeen scenes in two acts, so to avoid a disjointed offering, all sorts of devices and ingenious thinking have to come into play not to mention imagination on the audience’s part. But I hope the acerbic wit of the writers, honed by years of satirical and comic writing from Spitting Image onwards, will still shine through. I’m confident that the cast and crew will do it justice.

I seem to remember that when this season’s plays were announced, this one was marketed as a farce. Well … the basic premise probably is – a Hollywood A-lister turning up in a sleepy English village to front the local am-dram production of King Lear? Mm. But the play itself, though littered with killer one-liners, cleverly places some of the themes of the play-within-a-play into the lives of the characters and weaves a bittersweet and humorous tale.

This is one of the most technically challenging plays I’ve directed, needing careful attention to sound and lighting. So it’s poignant that it’s in rehearsal when a superb lighting designer, good friend and wonderful human being has recently died after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s and I’d like to dedicate this production to the memory of Barry Greenwood.