The Fortune Theatre is currently closed as part of the West End shutdown. Heartfelt apologies to all our ticket holders! As soon as we know when theatres are reopening, we shall announce it far and wide. Until then, if you have purchased tickets for a cancelled show, the box office team will contact you directly about credits/exchanges. Updates from the theatre may also be found here: atgtickets.com/coronavirus-info.
We very much look forward to seeing you when the Fortune reopens! In the meantime, please feel free to join us from a charmingly respectable social distance on BBC Radio 4 or download one of our vintage performances, filmed live at the Savoy Theatre and Leicester Square Theatre.
Most importantly, look after yourselves, dear friends, and we are thrilled at the prospect of seeing you as soon as the West End returns to its usual glory!
We are in fits of excitement, for this month we are to record our very own radio show for the delightful Lord BBC! We are recording on the 5th of the month of May. Sadly, tickets are sold out ~ but you will be able to hear the programme itself on the wireless in June. We only hope you have enough smelling salts with you at the time to contain your joy.
Amongst ourselves, plans gather apace for the Edinburgh Festival. Messrs. Dickson, Morpurgo and Roberts and Dames Parris and Gittins will have solo shows, which you may see in ‘preview’ format beforehand if you are in the Capital.
Or, if you have a spare shilling, you may see Captain Hunter Murray’s last Edinburgh show in the heart of Soho’s hunting grounds. Extra dates have been added and you may purchase a billet here.
Miss Amy Cooke-Hodgson was to be found not only in modern dress, but also on the ‘television’ this month, where she appeared in Little Boy Blue on ITV. Although she has survived the scandal of being seen without a bonnet so far.
Ms. Cariad Lloyd has launched the second series of her ‘pod’ cast, the ardent and delightful GriefCast. You may subscribe to it on iTunes or Acast, and it was recently reviewed on Saturday Review for the Radio Four.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall seize this chance to delightedly announce that Austentatious will very soon be coming to a radio near you! If your proximate receiver is switched to BBC Radio 4 at some as yet TBC point in June. Which of course it should be.
Yes, lovely Auntie Beeb has commissioned us to perform Austentatious on the wireless in recognition of the upcoming bicentenary of dear Jane’s death (18th July 1817, fact fans). We are over the moon about it (the commission, not the death), especially since it will be the first long-form improvised format the BBC have ordered since our good friends The Showstoppers had their own radio run in 2011.
The show will be recorded at the Drill Hall on May 5th, in front of a live audience (which as established alas rules out Jane herself), and will then be polished up and ready for transmission in the summer.
Thrilling as that is, it constitutes just part of what is shaping up to be a very, very busy summer for the group.
In August, we return to our spiritual home of Edinburgh for our 6th(!) Fringe in a row, where we will once again be donning our pelerines and pelisses to take to the stage in that divine supine bovine – the Udderbelly!
Before that, we’ve a smattering of performances across the land, including an appearance at the Cornbury Music Festival alongside our musical heroes Right Said Fred (we fully expect a rendition of ‘I’m Too Sexy For My Chemisette’ played on the harpsichord), and at the Wimpole History Festival, alongside our favourite subject at school: History.
What’s more, we’re somehow finding the time for not one, but two European jaunts to France and Germany. Sacre Bleu! Something in German!
And to top it all off there may well be another very special announcement being made very, very soon. Watch this space, dear readers…