JUNE 5 - JUNE 27

MALTHOUSE THEATRE PRESENTS

A COMMERCIAL FARCE

BY PETER HOUGHTON
DIRECTOR AIDAN FENNESSY
SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER ANNA CORDINGLEY
SOUND DESIGNER BEN GRANT
LIGHTING DESIGNER MATT SCOTT
CAST
PETER HOUGHTON, LUKE RYAN

Bill drives a clapped out ‘68 Jag and wears second hand clothes. He’s an experienced theatre director on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There’s less than 24 hours until the curtains go up and this production is unraveling…fast. Enter Jules, the latest fresh-faced television star of Murder Squad. He’s the name that’s going to sell the tickets. Without him the show is doomed. But when Jules fails to perform the simplest of acting tasks, Bill’s raison d’être becomes teaching his young pupil the very meaning of farce.

1. 1 The banana peel is not your enemy. Your mind is your enemy. Trust in the peel and ignore your instincts.
2. 2 The audience want to laugh. If they don’t laugh at the joke, try violence. Violence is funny.
3. 3 An idiot can never play an idiot. (That’s why I’m worried.)
4. 4 Good drama is like a good meal. Good farce is like breaking wind. Relax and let go.

5 Drama is how life could be. Farce is how it is.

Driven by wit, cynicism and thigh-slapping humour, A Commercial Farce is biting comedy at its best. Expect slapstick, running gags, misunderstandings and an inability to communicate the simplest of messages. It’s one big, complex and complicated dog’s breakfast - that must nonetheless unfold with blind precision.

From the formidable comic talent of The Pitch and The China Incident comes Peter Houghton’s new take on a time-honoured tradition of the theatre. Director Aidan Fennessy will hurl Luke Ryan (Tartuffe, The Spook) against the acting force of Peter Houghton in a production guaranteed to fuse physical humour, sexual innuendo and transgressive behaviour with an almighty bang on the Beckett stage.

ATTENTION PATRONS: THIS PRODUCTION CONTAINS SMOKE EFFECTS, STROBE LIGHTING & LOUD NOISE.