THERE’S more rudeness at the Headgate Theatre in Colchester this week.
If last month’s the Country Wife wasn’t edgy enough for you, then check out the latest offering from the theatre’s own production team.
They’re performing Eric Idle’s Pass the Butler, a madcap farce about a Tory minister on a life-support machine.
Directing is Steve Dunt, whose last show for the Headgate was Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw.
He says: “I like a little bit of dark humour in my productions and I picked up this wonderful Eric Idle play while browsing in Oxfam last year.
“The book was falling to pieces, but I couldn’t put it down and I decided it had to be my next theatrical adventure.
“The fact this play is set in the early Thatcher years also has a topical irony. There’s certainly a little of the Iron Lady and her politics visible in the play.”
Written in 1982, the play centres on the family of Sir Charles, the Tory Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister, who has been in a coma for a year.
His loved ones face the agonising decision of switching off his life-support machine, but the intervention of the man from the electricity board, the press, the local police and some shady family affairs turn the procedure into a Pythonesque farce.
Steve adds: “If you don’t mind your comedy a little rude and satirical and you enjoyed the Monty Python era, then you shouldn’t miss this off-the-wall send-up of upper class life and politics.”
Pass the Butler
Headgate Theatre
Chapel Street North, Colchester
Wednesday to Saturday, 7.45pm
£10, £8 concessions
01206 366000
www.headgatetheatre.co.uk
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