Next Stage - Kingswood's resident theatre company - presents the perfect start to the festive season with this hilarious look at the world of amateur dramatics as depicted by one of our leading playwrights.
Death and the Maiden must surely be one of the most important plays of the decade. It makes a powerful and salutory political statement in the tense and contemporary language of a psychological thriller which reverberates with the themes of classical tragedy.
Celebrating visions of Utopia in an arcadian setting, Next Stage Theatre Company teamed up with talented musicians from around the country to present a beautiful programme of music and drama taken from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.
At the heart of the play is the theme of "betrayal". Betrayal of ourselves, of each other and how we in turn are betrayed by our institutions. Betrayal can take many forms and it is not always obviously that we have been betrayed, or are being betrayed.
This is the story of Susan, a woman on the edge of madness, the play carrying the audience from reality to illusion as she populates her garden with the ghostly manifestations of an idealised family. At the same time, the hidden cracks in her real marriage are opening up.
The play is set in a room of a Victorian built university in the North of England. Rita, common, uneducated, blunt and brash is hungry for education and some purpose to her working class existence.
