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Book review: Reputation by Lex Croucher

I really enjoyed this book. I am new to Regency-era, Jane Austen and Brontë-type fiction, having only seen the 2019 version of Emma. last year and one episode of Bridgerton so far. So I wasn’t sure what to expect. However, I know enough to be aware of the strict formalities of aristocratic life in these times, where a bare ankle could shock but opium and snuff usage was fine. The novel is being marketed as Bridgerton x Gossip Girl x Mean Girls, and indeed there is an almost direct quote from the latter film in the novel, preceding a trip into town to shop which I enjoyed.

There was a time in the late 2000s/early 2010s when Lex and I were friends with a few of the same people through online communities, and eating my first ever Nando’s I was sat at a table with them. To be clear I wouldn’t say I know them, but like I say, I do or did know some of their friends, and I noticed I’d been subconsciously seeking out any references or in-jokes I might be party to. I found none, but I did see parallels with some Emma characters – again, my only literary reference for the period. Frances put me in mind of Jane Fairfax, and Betty Walters of Harriet Smith, and of course Georgiana would be Reputation’s Emma. In my head – and I realise this now as I type – when reading, I pictured Thomas Hawksley with the face of Johnny Flynn. These may be entirely innocent similarities, or perhaps Lex is parodying the genre and structure of Emma et al; I wouldn’t know. All I would say is that I don’t think it’s a bad thing, and in essence the two sets of characters do differ a lot, in the same way that crude oil can be made into both plastic and petroleum. Both are basically dinosaurs at the end of the day, right?

I laughed a lot reading Reputation. I would’ve liked to have known a little more about the area it was set in – there were moors, sure, and grand estates, which leads me to Yorkshire, but then that necessitates changing the characters’ accents in my head accordingly. Similarly I understood the characters to be in their early 20s – young enough for them to still be unmarried without it meriting scandal – but wasn’t quite sure beyond that. Others with more knowledge of the time would perhaps pick up on more clues than I did. But I suppose it doesn’t really matter; 20s as an age range is fine.

The letters between Georgiana and Mr. Hawksley were funny and reminiscent of modern romance – though they are obviously written out longhand formally, being hand-delivered by messengers rather than through the postal service gives an immediacy and easy teasing and flirtation to the messages we would recognise today.

Overall I am happy I got to read this book, and I did try to stop myself racing through it but failed. The fact it isn’t out yet for a while means I can’t discuss it with anybody, but I want to! It’s that sort of book. Sequel needed? You bet!

==
Obviously I wrote that a few months ago but was asked to hold back until pub week, so here we are. Reputation by Lex Croucher is out now.

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Van Gogh and Britain

Tate Britain, Milbank SW1P, from today (27th March) until 11th August 2019

A new exhibition at the Tate Britain art gallery, the home of the Tate’s pre-1914 British art collection, brings together some Vincent van Gogh paintings that have rarely if ever been seen together, or in public at all, in the biggest collection of his work in a decade. The show includes works from private collections such as Trunk of an Old Yew Tree, painted in Arles in late 1888 and showing the town bisected by the tree, as well as from other galleries including the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, which has loaned The Prison Courtyard, van Gogh’s only painting of London, albeit based on an earlier 1872 engraving by Gustav Doré.

‘Trunk of an Old Yew Tree’, Vincent van Gogh, 1888. Private collection
‘Trunk of an Old Yew Tree’, Vincent van Gogh, 1888. Private collection

I visited Paris in January and saw the mesmerising Starry Night Over the Rhône, and now here it is in London.

Schoolchildren sketch ‘Starry Night Over the Rhône’ (1888) from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Schoolchildren sketch ‘Starry Night Over the Rhône’ (1888) from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris

A very well-known piece by the Dutch artist and it’s the second big painting in the exhibition. But with an artist like Vincent van Gogh, there is no shortage of wonderful art.

Close up of ‘Vincent’ painted signature on ‘Sunflowers’, (1888) from the National Gallery, London
Close up of ‘Vincent’ painted signature on ‘Sunflowers’, (1888) from the National Gallery, London

Sunflowers (F454), his utterly iconic still life of the bright yellow flowers in a golden vase, returns to Millbank for the first time since 1961 when the painting moved to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. It’s surrounded in this exhibition by other similar bright, colourful paintings of flowers, the notion being that they were all van Gogh-inspired. Whether this is accurate is for the art experts to argue over, but it makes for a very pleasant room.

At my count, there are more than sixty van Gogh works in the exhibition – mainly paintings of course, but some graphite and chalk sketches, some letters to his brother Theo, and lithographs. On first glance it might seem unnecessary to have works by other artists, but after going around a few times and reading the captions and wall quotes dotted around (look up) it starts to make sense. The large number of works by the Dutch artist that are here avoid any accusations of mere bulking out. It’s always interesting to see different artists’ work together, especially one who in his lifetime was not financially successful at all. You get the sense that there was so much more to come from him, there being no slowing down of his output even when he was in the asylum towards the end of his life. That’s a much wider conversation we are having today about mental health, of course.

Schoolchildren admire ‘Self-Portrait’ (August 1889) from the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Schoolchildren admire ‘Self-Portrait’ (August 1889) from the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

The EY exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain is open now. Tickets are £22/£20 concessions or free for Tate members. If you are aged 16- 25, join Tate Collective for £5 tickets. Advanced booking is advised.

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Book review: The Water Cure

THE WATER CURE by Sophie Mackintosh

I was intrigued when I first saw an email from NetGalley inviting me to read this book. Could it be the same Sophie Mackintosh I once met at her university, and performed with in a surreal, one-off performance of a play written by our friends and taking place in someone’s student accommodation? I have only vague memories of it and I doubt Sophie remembers at all, but full disclosure: yep, same Sophie.

It seems apt, then, that when reading her debut novel The Water Cure, you feel as if you’re constantly hampered by a veil, a net curtain, something blocking you. You’re underwater perhaps, and everything’s a bit murky. Mackintosh arranges things exactly as she wants them, and you are granted knowledge only when she wants you to have it. There is no second-guessing of plot here. I shall talk very little about plot in this review because you do need to read it and unpeel the onion she creates for yourself. Take everything at face value, but be aware it might all fall away…

There are three sisters, this we know from fairly on. They are isolated and live with their mother and no other people. Their only contact is with each other. Their father left for the mainland some time ago – there are hints about toxins in the air, special preparations have to be made each time he leaves to get provisions – but he hasn’t come back. We don’t know what might have happened to the rest of the world to cause it to be so polluted, or why the island the sisters inhabit was somehow spared. It’s drummed in to us that men are bad, and only King (the name they use for the father) is to be trusted.

We learn that the unusually spacious accommodation the women seem to reside in was formerly some kind of shelter or sanctuary for women. It’s implied – nothing is concrete in this novel – that either the catastrophic event on the mainland stopped the women from coming, or that the shelter stopped serving its purpose. We don’t know.

The novel is divided in to various chapters, each headed usually by the name of one of the sisters, or we are to understand, in the third person. Seemingly interjected are notes from the mother, in italics. This was my understanding of how each voice was introduced and it may be wrong, but it added to the fluidity of the narrative. Nothing got stale as we see events from different perspectives. Everything we know is challenged and unreliable gatekeepers are, by the end, mostly discovered and clarified. I believe the novel ends neatly but not unrealistically so. The tale is told.

The novel is longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and the shortlist will be announced on 20/09/18.

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Theatre review: Imperium: Conspirator & Dictator

IMPERIUM: CONSPIRATOR and DICTATOR

Based on the Cicero novels by Robert Harris, adapted by Mike Poulton.

Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by RSC Artistic Director Greg Doran. First performed at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon in November 2017. Transferred to London from 14th June.

From Robert Harris’s acclaimed Cicero trilogy of books about politics, sex, murder and oratory – Ancient Rome in a nutshell – we get what is essentially a story told in six new plays across an entire day of theatregoing (or two nights) adapted by Mike Poulton (RSC: Wolf Hall; Bring Up the Bodies). It never feels like a slog though, as each part is split across three acts with two full intervals. That world of over two thousand years ago straddling the Tiber races through time towards us at lightning speed to the present day, with Poulton’s use of modern day vernacular, visual gags referring to Donald Trump and talk of the newly-conquered Britain being just outside Europe reminding us that in politics, nothing ever changes.

The books told the story of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Senator, consul, Father of the Nation and orator, in volumes narrated by his slave and later freed secretary, Tiro. Olivier- and Tony Award-winner Richard McCabe (RSC: Associate Artist; School of Night; King John) leads the cast as Cicero. Tiro is retained in the stage production in this role, our go-between breaking the fourth wall with frequent comic asides. Joseph Kloska (RSC: Measure for Measure) portrays Tiro as earnest, intense and loyal in a finely-tuned performance, at Cicero’s side throughout his adult life.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (Richard McCabe) and Gaius Julius Caesar (Peter de Jersey) in Imperium: Dictator. Photo by Manuel Harlan © RSC
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Richard McCabe) and Gaius Julius Caesar (Peter de Jersey) in Imperium: Dictator. Photo by Manuel Harlan ©RSC

As the consummate politician and meddler, McCabe imbues Cicero with wit, ingenuity and a self-indulgent streak, but also shows his weaknesses, foibles and mistakes. Desire for a status symbol befitting the Father of the Nation, he buys a house from fellow Senator Crassus (David Nicolle) on the Palatine (from which we derive first the Italian, palazzo, then the English palace). Of course, he’s been played as part of a scheme to discredit him in the later trial of his consular colleague, Hybrida, played by Hywel Morgan (RSC: Queen Anne; The Alchemist).

Julius Caesar, played powerfully by Peter de Jersey, (RSC: Associate Artist; Hamlet; As You Like It) is shown as more rounded a character than usual. We see the uneasy friendship between him and Cicero, which ends when Caesar’s assassins dispatch the dictator, and Cicero denounces him to an uncomfortably sad Tiro – “We were his slaves!”. Before that, we see his return to Rome from conducting his Gallic wars, and his Triumph, where we first meet Octavian. Caesar’s nephew and posthumously adopted son, later to become the Emperor Augustus, is played by Oliver Johnstone (RSC: King Lear; Oppenheimer) with hints of ruthless determination that characterised his later rule. His right-hand man Agrippa, who in real life was later to be responsible for the repair of old aqueducts and a building programme of new ones to supply the expanding city, is a lot more blunt in his dealings with Cicero, mistrusting him.

A standout performance by Joe Dixon (RSC: Associate Artist; Boris Gudonov; The Orphan of Zhao) in the dual roles of Catiline and Marc Anthony ranges from hilarity to terror and anticipation at where he will take both roles.

Siobhán Redmond’s (RSC: Associate Artist; King John; Much Ado About Nothing) turn as Terentia, Cicero’s wife, is not blessed with a lot of stage time. As one of only four actresses in the cast, she probably has the most amongst them. She is variously deeply in love and exceptionally angry with Cicero, when he exiles himself to Brundisium after refusing Caesar’s perfection when the Republic falls for the first time. Terentia is left with his daughter Tullia (Jade Croot, an RSC veteran at age 19) pregnant with her sixth child and dangerously ill.

The aforementioned Trumpian visual gags come in the form of Christopher Saul’s (RSC: King Lear; The Canterbury Tales) Pompey Magnus. With his hair adrift and his self-importance boundless, the reference to the US President fits very nicely. Professor Dame Mary Beard assures us that Pompey indeed had a quiff, so it’s also historically accurate as far as can be determined.

Those with truly expert knowledge of Ancient Rome will find things missing or simplified, as I suspect perhaps in the novels too. Marc Anthony’s marriage to one of Hybrida’s daughters, for example, long before Fulvia and Cleopatra. For almost all of such theatregoers, I believe this will not matter a jot. One is always so present in the drama, swept along by Tiro, that there is no time for fact checking before we move on.

The excellent cast includes Eloise Secker as Clodia and Fulvia; Nicholas Boulton as the augur Metellus Celer and Nicholas Armfield as Clodius. Alisha Williams plays roles including Caesar’s second and third wives Pompeia and Calpurnia.

There is beautiful, evocative and dramatic music – trumpets and drums – by Paul Englishby, movement direction is by Anna Morrissey, (watch for some powerful filmic fight scenes in Part Two with fight director Terry King) lighting is by Mark Henderson and the designer is Anthony Ward, who uses brown brick and grey block to give us the various senatorial meeting places, people’s houses and battlefields with the help of a giant orb above the stage by RSC Production Video.

Until 8th September, Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue. rsc.org.uk *****/*****

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Theatre review: Macbeth, Royal Shakespeare Company

I attended the press night of the RSC’s 2018 production of Macbeth but paid for my own ticket and lodgings.

Continuing my long-term project to see all of Shakespeare’s canon on stage, and a 2018 ambition to see more regional theatre, I left London for Stratford-upon-Avon. The last time I was here, making my radio documentary, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre was still undergoing reconstruction. So this was my first visit inside. The floorboards of the stage from the 1932 theatre have been salvaged and used around the outside of the auditorium in the rebuilt structure, a lovely touch. However, as Shakespeare wrote, the play’s the thing – and thats why I was here.

The cons – I was in an aisle seat to the extreme right of the thrust stage, which was mostly fine, except there were text projections above the stage which I couldn’t see. There was also a kind of mezzanine second stage á la the Globe Theatre I couldn’t see almost any of, but performers appeared there sometimes.

A digital clock at the mezzanine level began counting down after Macbeth kills Duncan, giving a helpful indicator of how long is left until the end of the play. However, in this action-light production, it felt a little like an (albeit fairly lenient) prison sentence marking the minutes until we were to be granted freedom. Get rid of it.

The three witches are played by three small girls clutching stuffed bears. Their key “boil boil” scene is moved to much later in the play than usual. I am not a Shakespeare scholar; I cannot wail feverishly about “the text” being butchered. But I noticed this change, and also that all the witch scenes were much shorter than those I have read in the First Folio, presumably to ease the load on the child actors. This does them a disservice, as the RSC should know from its productions of Les Misérables and Matilda the Musical that children acting can easily match adults in talent and stamina.

So to the adults. The famous Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Co-opted to describe the couple who cheated to game Who Wants to be a Millionaire? into giving them ill-gotten gains back in 2001 (a genius connection perhaps, but I’m seeing Quiz, James Graham’s exploration of the saga, next month). They were hardly on stage together and lacked chemistry when they were. It’s early in the run, perhaps, but I was disappointed. Christopher Eccleston is an emotion-driven, passionate actor – what made him such a good Doctor, and this is his Royal Shakespeare Company debut. Niamh Cusack I cannot particularly recall seeing in anything before, although I know the name. I didn’t feel that she was tormented much. Again, chemistry.

I must give a special mention to Ed Bennett as Macduff. Besuited, he was the spit of John Krasinski’s Jim from the U.S. version of The Office. He is a very low-key performer, his grief at the murder of his family palpable but still movingly understated, until the bubble bursts in the final scene, and he does for Macbeth. I saw him stand in for David Tennant in the title role of the RSC’s London run of Hamlet in 2008, and loved him. The last decade, in which he has worked consistently for the Company, have only improved his mastery of the craft. It was thoroughly enjoyable to see him again.

Look, overall, I wouldn’t rush to see this production. It’s coming to the Barbican in October and it will be likely fairly well received. It seems it is better than the National’s current production lead by Rory Kinnear and Ann-Marie Duff, which apparently relies on gore and an odd staging to draw the audience. So it’s up to you.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare, director Polly Findlay, is at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until September, and then at the Barbican Theatre, London, from October until January 2019. *** / *****

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Book review: On the Bright Side (Hendrik Groen)

**** / *****

After having adored the first “diary” by Hendrik Groen, I was excited to find out what the now 85-year-old had been up to. Although perhaps unsurprisingly a little bleaker in tone, the writing still feels searingly true to life. There is love and loss of all kinds in the second year Groen documents. There are of course more outings for the Old-But-Not-Dead Club, progressing to restaurant gatherings and even a trip abroad. For a time of life that can be extremely lonely for far too many people, Groen absolutely has it made, living as he does in the home with his friends, fighting the Director by re-forming a residents’ committee. There are new characters and dramas in the home. We learn a little more about Henk’s long life. Drawn out from memory almost casually is the death of his young daughter – not in a sensationalist way, since it is likely more than fifty years – but rationally, with acceptance. I am not sure exactly who Hendrik’s target audience is, but I recommend his diaries to all. He professes a desire to write his first novel “next year” – actually 2016 (this second book was published in his native Netherlands in January of that year). I understand via Google Translate on a Dutch publishing news site that the novel will indeed be published in 2018. I hope for an English translation soon after.

On the Bright Side: The New Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen is published on January 11th by Michael Joseph (Penguin UK)

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Book review: Last Seen Alive

I received a digital ARC of this book from Michael Joseph (Penguin) via NetGalley in return for an unbiased review.

This is the second novel by Claire Douglas I’ve read, and her third published. It required proper concentration, especially in the later parts of the story, which I was happy to give. I recognised the effort put in to planning the work and enjoyed it all the more for it. To inhabit the world of Libby for a few days was at first a welcome distraction from the world, then a nightmare. It was scary, prescient, real. The plotting was masterful, the characters nicely drawn. At first one or two felt like caricatures but their motivation was revealed later. Claire Douglas knows how to do twists well, and she deploys them again and again as soon as the reader is settled from the previous one. I raced through the second half of the book in a night because I needed to know what happens! A page-turner for sure where even the clean-cut and the goody two-shoes have dark secrets. Where just a name that once comforted can chill. The first-person narrative Douglas deployed so well in Local Girl Missing is what lets us sink so seemingly effortlessly in to the personas she creates. Here we have the added bonus of getting inside a second character’s head later on in the novel. 5*/5*

Last Seen Alive by Claire Douglas is published on 13th July 2017 by Michael Joseph and is available from Amazon, Waterstones and probably your local independent bookseller.

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Theatre review: Hamlet, Harold Pinter Theatre

HAMLET at the Harold Pinter Theatre
Produced by the Almeida Theatre, dir. Robert Icke.

This production was hugely disappointing to me. I am no particular Andrew Scott fan or Shakespeare scholar (other reviews have mentioned the cutting and rearranging of the text) but I know enough. I’ve seen Hamlet on stage before; the London transfer of the RSC’s 2008 production. David Tennant was off on the night I saw the show, ably understudied by Edward Bennett, but the formidable cast also featured Patrick Stewart, Oliver Ford Davies and Mariah Gale. Perhaps any production would not live up to the standards set by that one, but I hoped the Almeida might try.

Andrew Scott as Hamlet. © Manuel Harlan
Andrew Scott as Hamlet. Production shot © Manuel Harlan

Angus Wright as Claudius is shockingly underpowered. He doesn’t seem to act but recite his lines in his own rich voice. This aside, it was not kingly. He did not look regal, the usurper. He looked like he was emceeing a trade conference. Sitting as I was in the balcony, there were times when I could see no more than a collection of bald heads milling around on stage. But the director’s occasional use of live camera work beamed to screens at my eye level meant I did see some of the performance rather up close, and my criticism remains. Juliet Stevenson was perhaps the standout in this unhappy mix of thesps. I was very excited to see Jessica Brown Findlay, having failed to catch her in the Almeida’s Chekhov season last year but having enjoyed her turn in Black Mirror. Clearly she can act. Here she was woefully underused. Ophelia’a descent in to madness was conveyed simply by putting her in a wheelchair. Key lines were not spoken – excluded rather than forgotten, I would say. The cast did not seem to be miced, meaning that up in the balcony, even in the deathly silence of a rapt audience, we struggled to hear large portions of the play. Andrew Scott becoming alternatively hysterical and fiercely angry also led to a deterioration in what we could actually understand of his performance. He keeps his own Irish accent which only serves to mark him out from the rest of the cast with their RSC and RP voices. It is an absurd amalgamation.

We sat through almost two hours of this before, during the performance of “The Mousetrap”, a stage manager appeared calling for a break due to technical difficulties. This man was an actor, and this ruse in fact led to the first interval. To maintain this illusion of a “show stop” the director opted to keep the house lights down through the entire 15-20 minutes. Particularly upstairs in the balcony, I feel this was dangerous and artistic licence too far. I shall be speaking to Westminster Council to confirm the theatre has permission for this semi-blackout, but speaking personally I didn’t feel safe, especially with people’s bags and coats packed along the floor of the narrow aisles.

Not thirty minutes later we were out for another “pause”, only to return for another hour of boredom. The fencing scenes were pathetically done. Loud music blared out over a key scene here, removing the need for the actors to do anything behind mouth their dialogue. It was overall a terrible production. If you thought the RSC’s avant-garde stuff in the 70s was bad, stay well away from the Harold Pinter until September.

1/5 for Juliet Stevenson. Maybe it will get some people in to theatre who otherwise wouldn’t go.

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Book review: THE ESSEX SERPENT

THE ESSEX SERPENT by Sarah Perry

I had little idea of what to expect from this book, save for the first page I read before buying it. On completion, I feel I have lived at least the full year depicted in its pages between Essex and London. The writing is delicious and exquisite. Sarah Perry weaves so easily between the narratives of each character it is easy to forget you are not actually each person in turn.
The writing is often poetic but never denigrates to being flowery or extravagant. It simply and delicately paints a tempting picture of Victorian England, whilst including important issues of the time such as the housing crisis, poverty, a pre-NHS healthcare system and inequity. Sound familiar? There is love and lust, unrequited and not; there is friendship and hatred, the rich and the poor. It is a stunning tapestry of an era none of us have experienced, yet we still face many of the human problems today. It is the kind of polished writing that will make any author reading, aspiring or published, jealous at their comparative lack of skill.

Between the goings-on of Victorian society there was of course the matter of the Essex Serpent. Perry has created such a believable world in the fictional village of Aldwinter, bolstered perhaps by the real-life seventeenth century legend of such a beast. It permeates village life and becomes main character Cora’s – if any of them is truly the main character, it’s her – obsession. In the end everything is fairly neatly tied up, which may disappoint those who wish for further tragedy, but it felt fitting to me. Immediately after finishing the book I wanted to know more – to check whether Aldwinter was fictional or otherwise, to read the legend of the Essex Serpent – things I had stopped myself from checking before for fear of spoilers. In short, I highly recommend this book – the best I have read since Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, a book similarly ebbing between its characters’ thoughts and experiences. For those of an aural disposition, THE ESSEX SERPENT was recently adapted for BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime, and is available to listen for a few more days.

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Theatre review: Half A Sixpence, Nöel Coward Theatre

This revival surprises at every turn. It is superbly executed, led by a name that should soon be as familiar in the West End as those of Michael Ball or Alastair Brammer, two other young actors nurtured by the Cameron Mackintosh stable. Charlie Stemp takes on the role written for Tommy Steele, Arthur Kipps, a draper’s apprentice in Edwardian-era Kent. His Ann is Devon-Elise Johnson, another relatively unknown performer. That may well change soon.

The energy the cast display, both young and old, astounded me. Where they get it from with all the set changes, quick costume changes, and fast lyrics I cannot fathom. Presumably an ASM stands with an oxygen tank in the wings.

Paul Brown’s sets are detailed, much more so than the minimalistic designs “suggesting” locations seen recently in the West End. I especially liked a kind of bandstand which rolled on and off as needed as part of a wonderful triple revolve in the stage, each ring able to be operated separately. Great thoughtful design employed brilliantly by designer and director Rachel Kavanaugh, complemented by video projections by Luke Halls, showing us the imaginative vision for a grand house Arthur’s future mother-in-law wants for the family, and then the more realistic house Arthur himself wants.

The story might be set long ago and the original production conceived half a century ago but it doesn’t feel dated. Perhaps this is due to the new songs from Stiles and Drew, or Julian Fellowes’s amusing book. I can’t compare with an original I haven’t seen. But for the foreseeable future, money and the class divide will always be ripe for parody and dissection, and here it is in the form of musical theatre. The audience roared with laughter at times and gave a standing ovation at the end, prematurely as it turned out because the curtain call is part of a brilliant finale involving banjos. Five stars.

Half A Sixpence at the Nöel Coward Theatre, St. Martin’s Lane, London. Produced in Chichester and London by Cameron Mackintosh and Chichester Festival Theatres. Original music and lyrics by David Heneker, additional and revised music and lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe with a book by Julian Fellowes. Previews from 29th October 2016, opening night 17th November and booking until 11th February 2017.