Productions celebrate best loved writers
AT this point in the SDC calendar, we are usually preparing for our third play of the season as well as rehearsing our pantomime.
Often, we have already entertained you with a Youth production, two plays from our suite as well as a couple of musicals courtesy of BOSMTC and Maghull MTC.
As such, this is usually a performance lull, so this week’s look back focuses on a couple of authors born in November.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh. He was plagued by ill health through most of his life and died, aged 44, in Samoa where he had settled four years previously.
His first success was Treasure Island, published in 1883, and he is also well known for short story collections about Arabian Nights, as well as Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
This Gothic novella was adapted for the stage and has also been featured in many films of the 20th century. In 1990, the musical version debuted in Texas and was well enough received to have the run extended twice. After a five-year break, there was a tour of the show, then it made its’ Broadway debut in March 1997.
The SDC Youth Theatre tackled this production under director Stephen Hughes-Alty and performed to rave reviews in September 2007, with many of the lead actors now pursuing professional careers in the industry. Guy Unsworth mastered the lead as Dr Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde, flanked by Kelly Bond as his fiancee Emma and Rebekah Hinds as
Lucy Harris; the main attraction at The Red Rat.
Guy is now an international theatre director, Rebekah has many stage and screen credits as well as being one half of acoustic mash-up duo, Maris Piper, and Kelly went on to play the role of Lucy with Maghull MTC in 2012 and is an established singer and entrepreneur, based in Southport.
Another playwright we have celebrated in a past production is CS Lewis who was born November, 29 1898 and died November, 22 1963. He is perhaps best known for his Chronicles of Narnia and was honoured with a memorial in Poet’s Corner on the 50th anniversary of his death.
From the early 1950s, Lewis corresponded with Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer. She was 17 years younger than him and had come to England with her sons as her first marriage had broken down. The pair grew closer and eventually married in 1956, but their happy ending was cut tragically short by her death from cancer in 1960.
This relationship was the subject of Shadowlands by William Nicholson, which was a TV play in 1985, then adapted for the stage in 1989 before its cinematic adaptation in 1993 starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
The touching tale was presented by the SDC in February 2002, directed sensitively by Poppy Flanagan and featuring Brian Bentley and Kathy Felton Aksoy as Lewis and Davidman and is fondly recalled to this day.