Can’t get enough of the Austentatious players? Dying to know what we’re all up to?
Well, it’s your lucky day – here’s all the latest activity from our magnificent eight:
Miss Amy Cooke-Hodgson has been wearing a boiler suit and wrangling zombies for a new comedy film – Z-Hab (out very soon), and in the mean time she guest appears in Off the Top, an improvised cabaret show, alongside Jason Kravits off-Broadway this month.
Mr Andrew Hunter Murray can be seen weekly in the latest series of satirical juggernaut The Mash Report on BBC 2, and is preparing to leap into action on tour with fact-toting gallants No Such Thing As A Fish.
Our dear Lady Cariad Lloyd continues her series of melancholy and yet surprisingly cheery chats about death with various comedian of note. You can listen to these marvellous and touching talks here.
Miss Charlotte Gittins is working behind the scenes on a major documentary, travelling across Germany, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Russia. Let us hope she avoids Napoleon’s forces on her travels.
Mr Daniel Nils Roberts recently directed, edited and lent his voice to a short documentary about universal languages for BBC online – “Should We All Write In Chinese?” We’re not sure quite what Jane would think about that idea…
Mr Graham Dickson is developing a brand new solo Edinburgh Fringe show for 2018, whilst jetting off to LA for pilot season (and a healthy dose of improv performances at iO West and UCB). You can catch him in London weekly with the Free Association, who will likewise wend their way to Scotland in August.
Mr Joseph Morpurgo’s acclaimed solo show Hammerhead is embarking on tour around the UK in May and June, and if you are stuck in our smoggy capital it will also return to the Soho Theatre for a week-long residency.
Miss Rachel Parris is currently spreading satire like wildfire, in The Mash Report, and she will be touring the land in Spring with her solo comedy venture, Keynote, for which tickets are available now!
Our first jaunt in the West End’s capacious Piccadilly Theatre took place before Christmas, and now we are set to tread the hallowed boards for a second time, on Tuesday 23rd January. We can scarcely wait!
Last month’s show saw wassailing regency carol singers hailing the crowds as they streamed in from Piccadilly Circus, passing under our name in lights on the building exterior, before our brand new secret set was unveiled from within its mysterious packing crate.
The show itself was a romping tale of marital estrangement, and youthful yearning, taking in locations as varied as a beachside pier, a twilit graveyard, a coastal B&B and Ibiza. Exactly as Jane herself would have written it.
All in all it was an utter delight to transfigure our fanciful show into a West End spectacular, replete with some brand new Georgian costumes that would make even Darcy preen with pride, a pair of transcendent musicians in accompaniment, two halves of intrigue and romance, and our very own delightful drawing room. Not to mention a quite enchanting audience packing out the three sweeping tiers of the playhouse. It wasn’t just fun and exhilarating, but emotional too. So, overwhelmed and elated, we naturally want nothing more than to do it all again.
If you hurry there are a handful of tickets available for January’s show, and a handful more for February, and we are pleased to say that if you keep your eyes peeled we will shortly be able to announce the next three months after that. You didn’t think we’d have quite this much fun and not come back, did you?
“Ah! There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort”
EMMA
After a delightful month in the festive crumpled geography of Edinburgh we are indeed returned home for some (dare we say) well-earned rest.
We performed twenty-five of Jane’s lost works over our time in the Scottish capital, and their titles and subject matter were increasingly unexpected and unique! There was ‘Belfast Pubs I Have Known’ – a lurid tale of drinking and culture clashes in Northern Ireland, with some decidedly regrettable accents. ‘Prude & Incredulous’ subjected that day’s audience to the unforgettable sight of Mr Joseph Morpurgo clad in nothing more than a top hat (artfully positioned), and the run was topped off with ‘Jane Austen’s Love Island’, which saw blushing couples competing round the campfire. Jane was truly a visionary. And if the top hat incident was anything to go by, she will have wished she couldn’t envision quite as much as she did.
And so, wearied and flushed, we stumbled back down south. But our respite shall not last long. For we are soon to embark on a tour to every corner of our pleasant English land. From Leeds to Swindon, from Bath to Buxton – our landau shall bear us from borough to borough, as we bring the forgotten scribings of Jane to the public once again. Every date can be found here.
What’s more, we shall shortly perform in the suitably swanky surroundings of Kensington Palace, no less! Jane would be proud indeed.
So forgive us if we make the most of our brief break, sip tea and read books by the hearth, for soon we will be leaping into literary action once again!
“We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my cousin’s maid betrayed us.”
SENSE & SENSIBILITY
Unlike poor Colonel Brandon, who never made it across the border, we have leapt into our curricles and hotfooted it past Gretna and all the way to Edinburgh. We have the express intention of spending the season amongst the high society here, and what a bustle we find!
For it is the Edinburgh Fringe, no less, and already our adventures in our Udderbelly home have begun. So far we have plucked from our top hats the delightful trio of ‘Sarcasm & Satire’, ‘Boldark’ and ‘The Red Ribbon’, and we wait in frenzied anticipation to see what wonders the remaining three weeks will hold.
Do join us, dear reader, do!
If you are of a saucier disposition, and yet possessed of a warm and charitable heart, you may also spare a thought for our one-off debauched spectacular Crosstentatious – in which (though we blush to utter it) the men dress as ladies, and the ladies as men! For shame! Ribald as these coarse entertainments are, it is all in aid of Waverley Care, and a finer cause one nary encounters.
So if you are possessed of a hardy constitution, and have not your reputation to risk, you may invite yourself to the vulgar and boorish outrage on the 17th August right here.
For now, then, we bid you farewell. Or as the Scots would say (they are so very quaint, dear reader), ’cheerio the nou!’