Past Productions

Have a Nice Day: Carol, a not too bright breakfast TV presenter, is facing the axe. She has little sympathy from her co-workers, and her agent confirms that she will soon be out of a job without coming up with much of an alternative. “A wonderful satire on the shallow world of television”

A Different Way To Die: Holocaust survivor Anna has applied to emigrate to the new State of Israel. She has to be interviewed and assessed. A surprising revelation brings her world to crisis “A powerful and thoughtful drama about inhumanity”

The Luvvies: The Horbridge Amateur Dramatic Society Guild has organised a Quiz Night all about ‘the movies’ – With all their various, and very human, foibles, things soon crumble into disarray. It promises to be a (humorous) eventful night.

Justin and Julie-Ann, on the brink of announcing their engagement, have arranged a dinner party in order that their parents can meet. The atmosphere between the two of them is one of excited optimism, only tempered by slight unease on Justin’s behalf. This planned scenario is rather rudely interrupted with Paige Petite, a lap dancer who lives in the penthouse six floors above, quite literally drops onto the balcony. The carefully planned dinner party continues, but…

This delightful comedy features a cast of zany characters, a near-sighted, knife-throwing poltergeist, a Ouija board of doubtful veracity, thunder and lightning, screams in the dark and a satisfying body count.

‘Murder Inn’ is set in a dilapidated inn, supposedly haunted by a knife-throwing poltergeist. A group of ghost hunting tourists is forced, by a storm, to make an unscheduled stop. What looks to be an unpleasant and uncomfortable detour soon turns into a night of mayhem and madness.

Faced with a family gathering, world-weary Stephen Febble does his best to be difficult. When his daughter, her dreary husband Alan, their precocious child and – not least – the dog come to stay for the weekend it’s enough to make him reach for the whisky, and for the sarcasm. The climax arrives on Saturday night when his patient wife Virginia has laid on a dinner party and the chiropodist comes too.

A touching and hilarious comedy about an actress making her farewell performance…

‘The Actress’ dramatises the events backstage as a colourful, complicated actress makes her emotional farewell performance. Various people from her life invade her dressing room to say their goodbyes, declare their love, roar with laughter, spit insults, grab a final embrace, and renew old battles.

Based on the hit TV series written by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, the story follows the adventures of René Artois, a café owner in the town of Nouvion in German occupied France. Surrounded by German Officers, the Gestapo, Resistance fighters, amorous waitresses, escaped Allied airmen and a British agent disguised as a Frinch polossman (oops, French policeman), René tries to please everyone with hilarious results.

Trying to hide the priceless portrait of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies, stolen from the Nazis and concealed in a knockwurst sausage in his cellar is only one of René’s worries!

Adapted for the stage by Mike Poulton
By arrangement with Nick Hern Books

Lord Arthur Savile, although not overburdened with brains, is the perfect, well-bred gentleman engaged to the lovely Sybil Merton and is looking forward to a life of eternal happiness.

But his wedding plans are shattered after is told he is destined to commit murder after his future mother-in-law, Lady Julia Merton, arranges for unsettling cheiromantist, Mr Podgers to read his palm. To prevent his future wife from having to bow her head in shame for him, Arthur decides to commit this bloody deed before he marries.

Lord Arthur enlists the help of wily butler Baines and eccentric Prussian Anarchist Herr Winklekopf and together they hatch a series of woefully unsuccessful madcap plots to kill off a family member.

The convent in the small town of Hoboken has had a calamitous event. 52 sisters have been fatally struck down by a bowl of tainted vichyssoise but thanks to Reverend Mother miscalculating and spending the last of the finances on a plasma TV only 48 sisters have been buried,! So come and meet the Brothers and Sisters as they put on a variety show to raise funds to bury the last four sisters before the Department of Health come to inspect their freezer!!!

Described as a “hail of fun and frolic” by the New York Times, the original New York Production won four Outer Critics Circle Awards including Best Off Broadway Musical. With book, music and lyrics written by Dan Goggins, it has now been updated to the Mega Musical version, making this mixture of review/comedy/musical bigger and wackier than it was before!

“Guaranteed to lift your spirits”

The summer fete committee of a typical British village meets on a cold January night to discuss arrangements for that year’s fete. As committee protocol gives way to bickering and gossip, along with the unending problem of where to put the tea tent, we begin to see the personalities of those present. Much innuendo abounds around the vicar whose faith is in question and who enjoys more than his share of the communion wine and has a passion for someone other than his wife.

6 months later, we are in the throngs of a summer fete with prizes going missing, windows not opening and revelations that there was more than one affair going on, distress at missing floats, gunshots and someone getting to the end of their tether. These events are related with humour and pathos, with the upbeat ending affirming the enduring value of village life.

A group of extraordinary women, members of a very ordinary Yorkshire WI, persuade one another to pose for a charity calendar with a difference. Overcoming their initial reserve and riding the wrath of the outraged WI, the friends drop their dressing gowns, their modesty spared only by artfully placed cakes, knitting and flower arrangements. But as media interest snowballs, the Calendar Girls find themselves exposed in ways they’d never expected.

With a very English heart, Calendar Girls by Tim Firth and based on the Miramax film, is quirky, poignant and hilarious.

Reed Chandler is just about to be elected as President of the USA when he dies in the arms of a young lady. Violet, his wife, is so enraged at missing her chance to be the First Lady that she decides to groom her layabout son Cal for the Presidency. As Violet so eloquently puts it ‘If I can’t be the wife of the President, you can bet your ass I’ll be his mother’.

Music By Dana P RoweProduced By Judith Claypoole

After midnight before dawn:
“Six prisoners, one witch, no hope”

Interior Designs:
“An interior decorator with designs of his own”

Produced By Emily Connell

Produced By Judith Claypoole

Based on the play by John Van Druten and Stories by Christopher Isherwood.

Lyrics By Fred Ebb
Music By John Kander

Presented at the QEH Theatre as part of the Bristol One Act Drama Festival.

Also presented at Horfield Parish Hall along with poetry and prose readings by: Ruth Pitter, Phil Kydd, Mandy Nutton, Helen Currie, Jennie Hall

Produced By Judith Claypoole

A Medieval Mystery Play

Rose Bowl Nominated: Best Youth Production

No Way Out (Huis Clos)

A labor dispute by the workers of the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is the theme of this highly entertaining musical comedy. The story unfolds at a rollicking pace, accompanied by an exhilarating score including such hits as ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’, ‘Hey There’ and ‘Steam Heat’.

The Pajama Game which opened on Broadway on 13 May 1954, received unanimous rave reviews and ran for two standing-room-only seasons. New York Herald Tribune – ‘Broadway looks well in pajamas. This bright, brassy and jubilantly sassy show is the best musical of the season’.

The Pajama Game is a true American classic whose masterful blend of memorable melodies and light hearted romance has earned it enduring popularity with audiences.

Based on the novel ‘Seven-and-a-Half Cents’ by Richard Bissell
Music and Lyrics By Richard Adler and Jerry Ross
Musical Director Duncan Jennings

Presented at The Alma Tavern Theatre

Rose Bowl Winner: Best Actor, Best Set
Rose Bowl Nominated: Best Production

Rose Bowl Nominated: Best Shakespeare Production

Presented at the QEH Theatre as part of the Bristol One Act Drama Festival

Highly Commended in the Geoffrey Whitworth Playwriting Competition

Music By Jerry Brock
Lyrics By Sheldon Harnick
Produced By Julie Nicholson

Adapted By David Wood
Produced By Julie Nicholson

Presented at Redgrave Theatre – One Act Festival

War Poems read by: Donald Wainwright, Betty Topham, Judy Lee, Liz Smith, David Temperley, Philip Kydd

The story focuses on a group of young people living in a post-holocaust world who have the power to communicate telepathically. Their society is divided at birth by those who are physically ‘perfect’ and those who are not.