The Adamson Theatre Company at Wesley College St Kilda Roadpresents Senior School students in

Stephen Jeffreys’

The Queen is dying.Long live conspiracy!

The Adamson Theatre Company at Wesley College St Kilda Road presents Senior School students in

THECL NKI

Stephen Jeffreys’

STEPHANIE DES BARRES & JILL WELCH

TONY SCANLON & SAM COOK

CLARE COOPER, DAWSON HANN & TONY SCANLON

25, 26, 27, 28 March 2009Adamson Theatre, Wesley College St Kilda Road

A Note From The DirectorsEvery play worth its salt presents challenges for young and relatively inexperienced actors. Rising to meet those challenges is a key part of the process, and something that adds very much to the pleasure of the final performance. The Clink ranks high in its degrees of difficulty, both conceptually, and in the tone of its complex and often hilarious language, but the members of this fine cast have relished tackling and surmounting those difficulties. Their willingness to be brave and experimental with character, to get their tongues around difficult syntax to find the buried humour, and their commitment to delivering a finely crafted performance, have all meant that we have travelled a remarkable distance since those hesitant read-throughs at the start of the rehearsal period.

Apart from mastering some intricacies of language, and a range of sophisticated ideas presented in a largely comic fashion, the cast has also had to submit to some history lessons. While the play cleverly provides us with a view of political chicanery in the most contemporary of senses, it is nonetheless embedded in an Elizabethan world, requiring an understanding of manners, customs and social structures associated with a more distant time. And they have dealt maturely with all kinds of unfamiliar terrains, since this is a play of rants and coarse insults, of superbly crafted invectives, of sexual intrigue and innuendos, all serving a broader comic, and at times darker, purpose. We have been thrilled by the way they have gone about finding the tone of the play.

The performers have likewise had to familiarise themselves with the conventions of the comedia dell’arte with the added difficulties (but ultimate delights) of some purely Pythonesque moments to accompany these. For The Clink operates at several levels; it is a broad satirical comedy brushed by farce, a Jacobean thriller of corruption and opportunism, a reflection on politics, class, social privilege, the poor, religion, the monarchy and every kind of fool imaginable. And finally, it is a play about the nature of comedy itself.

A play about almost everything? Sometimes it has seemed like it, but we think this exceptional group of performers has done a first-rate job getting all these elements on stage at various times.

Clare Cooper, Dawson Hann & Tony Scanlon

About the PlayIt is Elizabethan England in its death throes. In the streets and stews of London, the powerful and the wretched alike await news of the succession from the lips of the dying monarch. The Spanish Infanta is waiting in distant wings to be called to the throne, if plotting by certain noblemen to return England to Catholicism is successful. But the Privy Councillors are determined on the Scottish James to secure Protestantism and prosperity, and will do anything to achieve their ends. But the dying Queen has been saying nothing for days, floating in and out of an infuriating and unhappy daze, defying numerous attempts to extract from her some pronouncement on her successor. And when she does finally pronounce, under an alchemical inducement, no one is present to hear the words. So the confusion and the plotting proceed apace.

At the heart of an intrigue to secure his own ends and, he claims, the country’s good, is Warburton, a minister of the crown, who has enlisted his daughter Beatrice and her maidservant Zanda as accomplices in his various schemes to deliver the throne to James VI of Scotland, and place the chain of the privy councillor around his own neck. But Zanda, a former slave liberated from Morocco, and a Catholic sympathiser, is playing a double game. And Beatrice proves to be more of a handful than her father had ever anticipated.

And into the world of the treacherous and influential wanders poor Lucius Bodkin, whose misadventures knit the play together. He is an entertainer and Everyman, fool and wise man, a victim of the political puppeteering of the powerful, and the essence of the play’s humanity, as well as the source of many of its comic observations. Initially engaged as the “entertainment” for a fun evening with a Dutch Trade Delegation that ends with a murder, he little by little discovers that he has been set-up. On the run from the high and mighty who have engineered his destiny, and finally caught and brought before his monarch, Lucius is confronted with a new form of justice on the very precipice of the modern world.

And what is the Clink? In the play, it is literally the part of London free from the restraints of the City where vices may be indulged. Characters speak of enjoying the “liberty of the Clink”. But at several of the play’s levels, the term retains its more conventional meaning of “prison”, often only metaphorically, but sometimes actually. The Abraham men, the destitute of the city’s streets, are depicted as wearing chains, imprisoned by their powerlessness and poverty. Others, the principal plotters who profit from the many vices rampant in the Clink, are prisoners of their own corruption. The play broadly suggests that society is an extended “clink” with merely different kinds of inmates.

Cast (In order of appearance)

Lucius Bodkin, a fool Martin Quinn

Thomas Bodkin, his brother, a lesser fool Elliot Munn

The Guard, an annoying Scot Chris Borzillo

Beatrice, a lady-in-waiting, later unhinged Elora Ledger

Zanda, her maid, a former slave Annabelle Tudor

Joan Butler, a wise practioner of alchemical arts Samantha Beer

John Frobisher, a privy councillor Maxwell Simon

An Old Woman Isabelle Knight

Elizabeth, a dying monarch Rachael Findlay

Hieronymous Bodkin, a deceased fool Joey Coley-Sowry

Warburton, a villainous minister of the crown Ryan Murphy

The Bishop, an unchristian prelate Morgan Stubbs

Davenport, a venereal Catholic nobleman Daniel Dindas

The Captain, a flamboyant connoisseur of duelling Paddy Martinkus

Gridling, a would-be roarer Daniel Smorgon

Drysdale, a dusty old pedant Isabella Grabowsky

The Abraham People, Members of the Dutch Trade Delegation and Ice Dwellers

Gus Attwood Michael Battiston Casey Dolcetta Jakub Duniec Alexander Hewett Seamus Kavanagh Paul Lewis Oscar Louw Grace Maddern Alexander McGregor Monica Shkolnik Ella Pattison Alexia Thorn

Maxwell SimonJohn Frobisher

Ryan MurphyWarburton

Chris BorzilloThe Guard

Samantha BeerJoan Butler

Annabelle TudorZanda

Casey Dolcetta

Paddy MartinkusThe Captain

Elora LedgerBeatrice

Rachael FindlayElizabeth

10, 11, 12 June 2009 Middle School Play

Martin QuinnLucius

Isabella GrabowskyDrysdale

Daniel DindasDavenport

Elliot MunnThomas Bodkin

Daniel SmorgonGridling

Morgan StubbsThe Bishop

Isabelle KnightAn Old Woman

Joey Coley-SowryHieronymous Bodkin

Seamus Kavanagh

10, 11, 12 June 2009 Middle School Play

18, 19, 20, 21, 22 August 2009 Campus Musical

Tickets now available. Book online at:www.wesleytheatre.net

The Abraham People

Production TeamDirected by .................................... Clare Cooper, Dawson Hann & Tony Scanlon Technical Direction by .................................................................... Sabino Del Balso

Designed by .......................................................... Tony Scanlon & Sam Cook (OW)

Costumes by .................................................. Stephanie Des Barres and Jill Welch

Properties by ............................................................................................... Lisa Bennett

Technical Crew .................................... James Barber-Wilson, George Beresford,Lachlan Birrell, Tom Brewer-Vinga, David Browne,

Daniel Dimasi-Whyte, Matthieu Donnelly, William D’Ornay,Joshua Evely, James Godfrey (OW), Nik Grahn, Duncan Jaroslow,

Matt Linden, Daniel Miller, Phoebe Neave, Thomas Orchard,Adam Ousalkas, Remy Perin, Constantine Procopiou,

Camille Saunders-Browne, Jack Strachan, Samantha Williams,John Woods-Casey, Sasha Zhook

Stage Managers .......................................... Lior Hadar and Stephanie McMahon

Stage Crew ................................ Alex Phillips, Alexandra McEnroe, Paula Zappi, Georgia Vann, Shian Su, Karl Robson, Kevin Kang,

Alice Bartram, Isabella Wright, Chris Hiiri, Anna Galvin

Ushers ................................... Hugh Aldous, Emily Barnuevo, Rachel Ben-David,Ellie Coker, Giulia Crema, Anders Floden,

Mischka Kamener, Brigitte Memmolo, Jillian Naylor,Lily Neilson, Daniel Richards, James Shutler,

Ella Thompson, Elizabeth Ward

ATC Business Manager / Publicity ......................................... Brett Fairbank (OW)

Programme ......................................................... Dawson Hann and Brett Fairbank

Poster ..................................................................... Tony Scanlon and Brett Fairbank

Box Office Assistants .................................................. David Browne, Annie Greenand Libby Talbot

The Directors and Cast are grateful for the help with the music provided by Margaret Arnold (Director of Music) and Dovi Hanner (violinist). Thanks also to Jamie McDowell for Choreography, Jeremy Bailey-Smith for properties and Russell Fletcher for character development.

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