TIL_22 Septimber 2017

18
Charlie Stemp.
QDOS 2017 PALLADIUM
PANTOMIME DICK WHITTINGTON
Emma Williams and Lukus Alexander
complete the principle casting for the
London Palladium Pantomime this
Christmas playing the role of Alice
Fitzwarren and Eileen the Cat
respectively. They will join Julian Clary,
Elaine Paige, Ashley Banjo and Diversity,
Paul Zerdin, Nigel Havers, Gary Wilmot
and Charlie Stemp as Dick Whittington.
Dick Whittington will run at the
London Palladium for five weeks only
over the festive season from Saturday
9 December to Sunday 14 January.
The show is produced by Nick
Thomas and Michael Harrison for Qdos
Entertainment, the team behind last
year’s twice Olivier-nominated London
Palladium production of Cinderella,
which broke box office records for the
highest grossing week in West End
theatre history.
Elaine Paige
Dick Whittington is written by Alan
McHugh, directed by Michael Harrison,
choreographed by Karen Bruce with
musical supervision and orchestrations
by Gary Hind.
Emma Williams recently completed
an award-winning run as Helen
Walsingham in Half A Sixpence at the
Noël Coward Theatre having also played
the role at Chichester Festival Theatre
alongside Charlie Stemp. She returns to
the Palladium where she made her West
End debut as Truly Scrumptious in the
original cast of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Her other theatre credits include Mrs
Henderson Presents at the Noël Coward
Theatre, Zorro at Garrick Theatre and
Love Story for Chichester Festival
Theatre as well as in the West End.
Emma Williams.
Lukus Alexander’s recent theatre
credits include the UK Tour of The Who’s
Tommy, Dick McWhittington at the
SECC, Glasgow, Dick Whittington at the
Theatre Royal, Plymouth, Guys and
Dolls at Cambridge Arts Theatre and
Doctor Atomic at the London Coliseum.
As the world’s biggest pantomime
producer, over the past 35 years Qdos
Entertainment has established itself as
one of the largest entertainment
companies in Europe. Over the past
three decades the pantomime giant has
staged 684 pantomimes and this season
expects over two million people will see
one of its shows this season.
Box Office telephone 0844 874 0667.
www.DickWhittingtonPalladium.com
KNIVES IN HENS
Donmar Theatre
Award winning South African director
Yaël Farbersteeps David Harrower’s 1995
play (his first) in a potently visceral
atmosphere which often makes for
uncomfortable viewing and begins with
the unnamed Young Woman brutally
plucking the feathers from a slaughtered
hen.
Set in a pre-industrial village, this
atmospheric three-hander reveals her
quest for knowledge and her increasing
alienation from the restrictions of the
rough physical pleasures she shares
with her ploughman husband, Pony
Williams, a man more solicitous of his
mare than the wife whom he treats as
little more than a sexually compliant
workhorse.
Though regarded by some as a modern
classic (and here strikingly designed and
lit by Soutra Gilmour and Tim Lutkin
respectively) the production, with its pared
down, intense language, is certainly not
an easy watch. It’s earthy, sweaty, primal,
with an ominous soundscape and
performances – from Christian Cooke as
the virile, dominating Pony and Judith
Roddy as his intellectually restless
spouse – to match. Matt Ryan is a quieter,
sadder presence as the widowed miller
Gilbert Horn, feared by the villagers for
his supposed powers, but whose learning
and education prove irresistibly seductive
to the Young Woman when she arrives
with sacks of grain for milling and,
through him, discovers the liberating
potency of words.
Louise Kingsley
Judith Roddy
Photo: Marc Brenner
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