GRADS’ next production will be the hilarious, raunchy farce Habeas Corpus by renowned British playwright Alan Bennett, at The Dolphin Theatre, UWA, presented by arrangement with Origin Theatrical on behalf of Samuel French Ltd.
It will be directed by Edgar Metcalfe AM CITWA, one of the driving forces behind Australian professional theatre for nearly half a century, who has directed several wonderful plays for GRADS.
Auditions 28th and 29th April: Venue: to be notified on application
Rehearsals (Sunday afternoons, Monday and Wednesday evenings) start: 27th May
Cast must be available for all rehearsals
Production week starts 15 July
Runs: 20 July to 4 August, Wednesdays to Saturdays.
Graduates and non-graduates are all invited to audition.
This is a non-professional production.
To audition, please contact: clairemalavaux@hotmail.com
Please prepare a short piece from a modern comedy for the audition. It can be read.
Cast required (ages are stage ages)
Arthur Wicksteed, 53, lusty doctor, large role
Muriel Wicksteed, wife of Arthur, 50. Buxom build, lusts after Sir Percy Shorter
Dennis Wicksteed, son of the above, 19-30, a hypochondriac always finding new illnesses
Constance Wicksteed, 30-40, flat-chested spinster who longs for a new body
Mrs Swabb, mature charlady and housekeeper, acts as chorus
Canon Throbbing, 30-40, repressed, randy, courting Constance
Lady Rumpers, 50-60, upper class Lady with a dark secret past
Felicity Rumpers, 20-30, gorgeous, flirtatious, lusted after
Mr Shanks, mature, a medical apparatus installer
Sir Percy Shorter, 50-60, president of the British Medical Assoc. Short, reacts badly every time shortness is mentioned
Mr Purdue, mature patient of Dr. Wicksteed, suicidal
Habeas Corpus is Alan Bennett at his incomparable best.
Permissive society is taken to task in this classic farcical comedy in which the characters, stereotypes as their names suggest, move – and indeed dance – in and out through a maze of mistaken identities and sexual encounters.
In Hove, Brighton in the 1960s, the lust and longing of the permissive society has well and truly taken hold of the apparently respectable Wicksteed family.
The determination to put sex and the satisfaction of the body before anything else is the ruling passion of their lives.
With a succession of characters ranging from a rampant doctor and a randy vicar, to a frustrated flat chested spinster and a baffled domestic cleaner, this is a rollicking, saucy English farce that will have ‘em rolling in the aisles!
Like some saucy Magill seaside postcard or an end-of-the-pier romp, identities are mistaken, the wrong knockers admiringly fondled, and libidos burst out of enforced hibernation!
