LOVE, LIES
AND SEDUCTION AS GRIPPING NEW CHRISTIE THRILLER COMES TO NEWCASTLE
Love From A Stranger
Newcastle Theatre Royal
Tuesday
12th – Saturday 16th June 2018
A dazzling new version of a forgotten Agatha Christie classic is coming to Newcastle Theatre Royal next month – unsettling, shocking and full of suspense, Lucy Bailey’s Love From a Stranger is Christie for the 21st century.
Love
From a Stranger tells the story of Cecily Harrington, who has
just won a huge sum in a sweepstake. Finally free to marry her dull fiancé, all
begins to unravel when she begins a whirlwind romance with a handsome and
charming stranger who sweeps her off her feet. She recklessly abandons her old
life to settle in the remote and blissful surroundings of a country cottage.
However, her newfound love is not all that he seems…
Electric
with suspense and with a shocking twist, this is an edge-of-your-seat, rarely
seen thriller by the UK’s greatest crime writer, rediscovered in a brand new
production by acclaimed director Lucy Bailey.
Christie’s play started life
as a short story, Philomel Cottage, which
was published in 1934 and later adapted for Theatre. It wasn’t performed until Frank Vosper, a
rising star of the stage and screen, worked up a sharper version which became a
hit in the West End in 1936, with a further run in New York. However, despite sundry
radio and film versions, Love From a
Stranger fell into obscurity, until now.
Director Lucy Bailey, acclaimed
for her work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe,
explained why she was drawn to the play: “What attracted me were the dark
undercurrents and how relevant it is, how we don’t know people and what erotic
addiction and compulsion blinds us in our lives. The successful liar is what’s
so fascinating to Christie. The story could happen any time. We are updating it
to the late fifties, but it could be set now. People go with their lovers to
isolated places to have a romance. It absolutely is current.”
She added: “In Agatha Christie
there’s always a mystery to be solved, isn’t there? In her stories and plays,
somebody is done away with and the task – which usually falls to a sleuth – is
to work out whodunit. In Love From a
Stranger many of the familiar elements of a Christie mystery are absent,
which makes it all the most mystifying. So, it will be a different experience
for audiences. I predict they will go to the pub talking about it.”
Love
From a Stranger is a drama that keeps audiences guessing –
it’s not a whodunit, but a whodunwhat.
Casting
includes Justin Avoth (Ripper
Street) as Nigel Lawrence, Helen Bradbury (Bloody Queens: Elizabeth &
Mary) as Cecily Harrington, Sam Frenchum (Grantchester, Holby City) as Bruce Lovell and Alice Haig (Scottish Killers) as Mavis Wilson.
The play is directed by Lucy
Bailey with set and costume design by Mike Britton, and lighting design by
Oliver Fenwick. Love From A Stranger is presented by Fiery
Angel and Royal & Derngate, Northampton.
Photos by Sheila Burnett
Tickets:
Love From A Stranger is at Newcastle Theatre Royal Tue
12 – Sat 16 June 2018 at 7.30pm and matinees on Wed and Thu at 2pm and Sat at
2.30pm, and early booking is advisable. Tickets
from £14.50 can be purchased from the Theatre Royal Box Office on 08448 11 21
21 (Calls cost 7ppm plus your
phone company’s access charge) or book online at www.theatreroyal.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.