Season 2024-2025
It's A Wonderful Life
Adapted by Mary Elliott Nelson Directed by Andrew Close Evenings: 18th & 20th to 25th January 2025 - 7:30pm Matinees: 19th & 25th January 2025 - 2:30pm Adapted from the classic film, this is the saga of George Bailey, the Everyman from the small town of Bedford Falls, whose dreams of escape and adventure have been squashed by family obligations and civic duty, and whose guardian angel has to descend on Christmas Eve to save him from despair, and to remind him – by showing him what the world would have been like had he never been born – that he has had, after all, a wonderful life. |
The Thrill of Love
by Amanda Whittington Directed by Peter Scofield Evenings: 15th & 17th to 22nd March 2025 - 7:30pm Matinees: 16th & 22nd March 2025 - 2:30pm Amanda Whittington's play dramatises the true story of Ruth Ellis, who was the last woman to be hanged in Britain. 2025 marks the 70th anniversary of her execution at Holloway Prison, but the notoriety of her case, the public outcry over her judicial killing and its influence on the decision to abolish hanging ten years later, mean that her fate has never been forgotten. |
On 10th April 1955 Ruth Ellis shot dead her lover, David Blakely, outside a public house in Hampstead. At her trial, only two months later, she pleaded 'not guilty'...
Pygmalion
by George Bernard Shaw Directed by Natalie Crompton Evenings: 10th & 12th to 17th May 2025 - 7:30pm Matinees: 11th & 17th May 2025 - 2:30pm One rainy, London night, phonetics professor Henry Higgins takes in a flower girl named Eliza Doolittle in an effort to win a bet with Colonel Pickering, an expert in Indian dialects. He bets Pickering that he can teach Eliza elocution and pass her off as a lady to all of London society. |
Despite many reservations and objections Eliza ultimately agrees to their experiment. Over the course of her education, Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle takes his chances with Higgins for money, but this backfires when he unwillingly becomes a well-off, middle-class gentleman thanks to Higgin’s connections with a rich philanthropist. Eliza turns out to be an apt student and easily convinces the ladies at a garden party that she is a mysterious duchess. Despite her success, Higgins is pompous about his efforts and never truly thinks of Eliza as a lady or his social equal after her stunning transformation. With a proposal from the besotted Freddy Eynsford-Hill lingering in the air, Eliza leaves Higgins to seek her own future.