John Kingsley Orton, known by the pen name of Joe Orton, was an English playwright, author, and diarist. His public career, from 1964 until his death in 1967, was short but highly influential. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque refers to work characterised by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism.
Betty Marsden was an English comedy actress. She is particularly remembered as a cast member of the radio series Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne. Marsden also appeared in two Carry On films, Carry On Regardless (1961) and Carry On Camping (1969).
Hay Fever is a comic play written by Noël Coward in 1924 and first produced in 1925 with Marie Tempest as the first Judith Bliss. A cross between high farce and a comedy of manners, the play is set in an English country house in the 1920s, and deals with the four eccentric members of the Bliss family and their outlandish behaviour when they each invite a guest to spend the weekend. The self-centred behaviour of the hosts finally drives their guests to flee while the Blisses are so engaged in a family row that they do not notice their guests' furtive departure.
Loot is a two-act play by the English playwright Joe Orton. The play is a dark farce that satirises the Roman Catholic Church, social attitudes to death, and the integrity of the police force.
Rosalind Marie Knight was an English actress. Her career spanned 70 years on stage, screen, and television. Her film appearances include Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957), Carry On Nurse (1959), Carry On Teacher (1959), Tom Jones (1963), and About a Boy (2002). Among her TV roles were playing Beryl in the BBC sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme (1999–2001) and Cynthia Goodman aka "Horrible Grandma" in Friday Night Dinner.
Bryan Pringle was an English character actor who appeared for several decades in television, film and theatre productions.
Mat Fraser is an English rock musician, actor, writer and performance artist. He has thalidomide-induced phocomelia. In 2017, he was cast to play Shakespeare's Richard III at the Hull Truck Theatre as part of Hull City of Culture 2017.
Lee Montague is an English actor noted for his roles in film and television, usually playing tough guys.
Sue Townsend Theatre is a theatre in the city of Leicester, England. The centre hosts live shows and films of the arthouse and world cinema genres. Julian Wright is credited for his work to preserve the theatre from demolition in the 1980s and in the 2000s. In 2010, after a new Phoenix Square opened on the other side of the city centre, the space became the Upper Brown Street Theatre, a music training and performance venue. It has since been renamed the Sue Townsend Theatre, to honour the late Leicester author and playwright, Sue Townsend.
Time and the Conways is a British play written by J. B. Priestley in 1937 illustrating J. W. Dunne's Theory of Time through the experience of a moneyed Yorkshire family, the Conways, over a period of nineteen years from 1919 to 1937. Widely regarded as one of the best of Priestley's Time Plays, a series of pieces for theatre which played with different concepts of Time, it continues to be revived in the UK regularly.
Julia Foster is an English stage, screen, and television actress.
Catherine Russell is a British stage, television and screen actress.
John Newport Caird is an English stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas. He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was for many years a regular director with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and is the principal guest director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm (Dramaten).
Janie Dee is an English actress and singer. She won the Olivier Award for Best Actress, Evening Standard Award and Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Play, and in New York the Obie and Theatre World Award for Best Newcomer, for her performance as Jacie Triplethree in Alan Ayckbourn's Comic Potential.
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is an 8½ hour-long adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1839 novel, performed in two parts. Part 1 was 4 hours in length with one interval of 15 minutes. Part 2 was 4½ hours in length with two intervals of 12 minutes. It was originally presented onstage over two evenings, or in its entirety from early afternoon with a dinner break. Later it was presented on television over four evenings.
Jasper Britton is an English actor.
The Time of the Cuckoo is a play by Arthur Laurents. It focuses on the bittersweet romance between Leona Samish, a single American executive secretary vacationing in Europe] and Renato Di Rossi, a shopkeeper she meets in Venice. Di Rossi, trapped in a loveless marriage, relentlessly pursues Leona, who initially is shocked by the thought of an illicit affair but eventually succumbs to the Italian's charms.
Robin Midgley was a director in theatre, television and radio and responsible for some of the earliest episodes of Z-Cars and for the television version of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Wars of the Roses.
Michael Feast is an English actor of stage and screen. He was born in Brighton, and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He performed in the original 1968 London production of Hair. He worked several times with John Gielgud, whom he later played in Nicolas de Jongh's biographical play Plague Over England. Feast had a significant role in the acclaimed TV series State of Play. He also played Aeron Greyjoy in the sixth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones.
Valmouth is a 1958 musical by Sandy Wilson based on the novel of the same name by Ronald Firbank.
