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Habeas corpus

Credits Programme note Pictures

Reviews: GDA adjudication Beacon review

The Cast

(in order of appearance)

Dr Arthur Wicksteed……………………….……… Benedict Kolczynski

Mrs Swabb…………………………………………….. Jackie Herbert

Muriel Wicksteed……………………………..…………. Susanna Davis

Constance Wicksteed……………………………………… Jean Burgess

Dennis Wicksteed………………………….…………………Ian Kubiak

Canon Throbbing…………………………………. ….. Hamish Maclean

Sir Percy Shorter……………………….…………… ……..Jack Burgess

Lady Rumpers…………………………….………………… Avril Dorey

Felicity Rumpers………………………………………... Fiona Maclean

Mr Shanks……………………………….…………… Alistair Anderson

Mr Purdue…………………………………..……………... Tony Gibson

Directed by Lesley Wolowiec

The Production Team

Stage Manager ............................................................... Mike Breeze

Prompt .............................................................................. Gill Mohin

Set Design .................................................................... Lynne Gibson

Set construction ....................................... Russ Herbert, Tony Gibson

Lights and Sound ........................................................ Jacek Wolowiec

Props and Furniture ...................................................... Jackie Herbert

Costumes and Make-up .................................................. Lynne Gibson

Publicity team ............................ Kevin Parker, Jack & Jean Burgess

Tickets and Front-of-house ........................Chrissy Stephenson-Oliver

Our special thanks to:

The Shetland Shop & Painswick Post Office for ticket sales

Gloucester Furniture Recycling Project

Dr Peter Baddeley, The Beacon Medical Practice and The Painswick Surgery for medical accessories.

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Performance Pictures

more performance pictures…

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Programme Note

Habeas Corpus had its first performance at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in May 1973 with Alec Guinness, Patricia Hayes, Joan Sanderson, Andrew Sachs and John Bird in the original cast which was directed by Ronald Eyre.

With macabre black humour including longings for death, marital jealousies and sexual repression, all marinated in a saucy contemporary permissiveness, it nonetheless makes for a good laugh thirty years on. This is a complex play with far more levels, themes and twists than even a good BBC sitcom, and does not fit neatly into any of the standard categories of comedy, such as farce, satire or light domestic trivia. With these added overtones, it is a complex play in both verse and prose about social conventions, manners, mortality and domestic misunderstandings.

The subject and overall ethos of the play is set out in the title. Habeas corpus is a legal term which demands the presence of someone in court, but literally means ‘bring forth the body’. As the action unfolds, the bodies – in all senses of the word – are duly brought forth.

Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett has been a household name in British theatre ever since he starred and co-authored the satirical review Beyond the Fringe with Dudley Moore, Peter Cooke and Jonathan Miller in 1960 at the Edinburgh Festival. Later the same show played to packed houses in London's West End and in New York. Although Bennett started by writing and acting for the stage, he very soon turned his attention to writing plays for television.

Bennett's career, though less spectacular than those of his Fringe companions, has displayed greater diversity and more solid achievement. To many he is now regarded as perhaps the premier English dramatist of his generation. This is all the more surprising given the low-key themes and understated expression of the "ordinary people" who populate his dramatic world. Like the poetry of Philip Larkin, another Northerner whose writings he admires, his writing frequently focuses on the everyday and the mundane: sea-side holidays, lower-middle class pretensions, obsessions with class, cleanliness, propriety and sexual repression.

While Bennett's "Englishness" and "Northerness" (terms by no means synonymous) are evident to see, they are no more nationalistic nor restricting than Chekhov's "Russianness." The characters he writes about are rooted in a particular social environment but the issues they raise are of more universal appeal: the essential isolation of human beings within the protective social roles they have adopted or had thrust upon them, the gap between self-awareness and the capacity to change, the crippling power of propriety. All of these themes are relayed through a tone that is simultaneously ironic and tender.

Brendan Kenny

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Review: Painswick Beacon

Falling trousers and rising breasts delight Painswick

Painswick Players chose well with this early Alan Bennett piece. He is one of Britain's favourite playwrights, and this sometimes dark comedy of marital infidelity and mistaken identity is as fresh as at its London first night 31 years ago.

If it would be hard to fail seriously with Habeas Corpus, the Painswick cast made it a success that delighted full houses. They avoided the trap of failing to take the plot's absurdities completely seriously, and rose to the challenge of a script that includes song, dance and verse as well as crackling, funny lines.

Perhaps the pace slackened in the second act when nonsensical explanations were laboured instead of quickfire. But the loss of several pairs of trousers and the possibilities offered by a fitter of breast enhancers confusing a splendidly-endowed wife with a flatter sister in law were exploited with gusto.

Alistair Anderson was the earnest falsie salesman, lifting and rearranging with delicate dedication. He and Jack Burgess, playing the lover who got away and came back with a title, bore their de-bagging with dignity.

Benedict Kolczynski was well cast as the mournful doctor with the roving eye. Susanna Davis was his unfulfilled wife seeking solace with the chairman of the BMA but finding instead the arms of the visiting breast expert. Jean Burgess made an excellent job of Constance, flat at the play's opening, but outstanding once her appliance had arrived.

Jackie Herbert gave a full-blooded and well-observed performance as the domestic help who sees all, and confides - chorus-like - in the audience.

Hamish Maclean, a sex-obsessed parson, and lan Kubiak, a backward son unexpectedly blessed by the attentions of pretty Felicity - a nice debut role for Fiona Maclean - made the utmost of their opportunities.

Avril Dorey was formidable as Felicity's fearsome mother, with a commanding eye and voice to match.

And no-one could have struggled more convincingly in his noose, than Tony Gibson as the almost-hanged man.

Lesley Wolowiec directed the romp, and everyone enjoyed the performance tremendously.

Robert Cunningham