Archives - Audition: Stoppard Week

by Tom Stoppard

Produced by John Davies

Monday 9th July 2012 at 8pm in Room One

Playing dates: 2nd to 10th November 2012

This year’s new directors’ showcase comprises four one-act plays by Tom Stoppard, all written near the start of his career, and each in its own way a brilliant example of his surreal wit and theatrical inventiveness. There will be two programmes, each of two plays, playing on alternate nights.

Auditions for all four plays will be held at the same time, and the four directors will come to joint casting decisions, so you may find yourself being fought over. Depending on your appetite for acting, you could find yourself appearing in more than one of the four plays, though you certainly won’t be obliged to. It would make a lot of sense for many of the actors in Dogg’s Hamlet to also appear in Cahoot’s Macbeth.

Programme 1

The Real Inspector Hound, directed by Richard Llewellyn.

Two newspaper critics are in the theatre to review a rather bad whodunnit, then somehow get caught up in the action, with hilariously tragic results for them both.

Cast

Moon: critic. Age Immaterial
Birdboot: critic. Age Immaterial
‛Mrs Drudge’: stage charlady, middle aged
‛Simon Gascoyne’: juvenile lead
‛Felicity Cunningham’: twenties. Beautiful, ‛trim buttocked’. Well, do your best.
‛Lady Cynthia Muldoon’: thirties
‛Magnus’: any age. Wheelchair bound.
‛Inspector Hound’: comic stage copper.
A body. No lines, must be able to lie still.

After Magritte, directed by Mel Powell.

An apparently surreal piece, based on a startling initial Magritte-like image and a strange reported off-stage event. Both turn out by the end to have perfectly mundane explanations, though other extraordinary possibilities are explored along the way.

Cast

Harris: aged about 40, could be a bit older
Thelma, his wife. A bit younger.
Mother: a little old tough, querulous lady, tuba player. (Sound track will be supplied)
Chief Inspector Foot (of the Yard): another comic copper, hysterical, subject to migraines.
PC Holmes: a plodding Plod.

Programme 2

Dogg’s Hamlet, directed by Roger Eames.

This is set in an overseas school where preparations are under way to perform Hamlet. What appears at first to be English turns out not to to be, but a foreign language that Stoppard aims to teach to the audience. The play ends with the performance (in English) of a 15 minute version of the Shakespearean masterpiece.

Cast

Able, Baker, Charlie: school children (could be adults)
Dogg: Headmaster, director of Hamlet
Mrs Dogg: his wife
Easy: A van driver from Leamington Spa, who only speaks English.
Sundry characters from Hamlet, some of them played by those mentioned above: some doubling called for.

Cahout’s Macbeth, directed by Tim Lee.

Set in an Iron Curtain country loosely based on Stoppard’s native Czechoslavakia, a performance of Macbeth in an actor’s apartment is interrupted by a police raid.

Cast

Hostess: the wife of the lead actor. More or less any age.
Police Inspector: sarcastically polite
Easy: as in Dogg’s Hamlet (preferably but not necessarily the same actor)
Sundry characters from Macbeth – a total somewhere between 5 and 14.

Contact details

Scripts are available from the Production Secretary, Joan Bird, on 01438 362065 (roybird@talktalk.net).

John Davies (Producer): 01707 882209 (john.davies1@ntlworld.com)

Roger Eames: roger.eames@ntlworld.com
Richard Llewellyn : 07740 435458 (nedallan@live.co.uk)
Tim Lee: 01462 612456 (timlee@mac.com)
Mel Powell: 01763 272555 (mel.powell@which.co.uk)

Auditions for all productions