​Be afraid! Be very afraid! The most famous vampire of all, Dracula, is coming to Winchester’s Chesil Theatre in March 2020. Open auditions for the 10 exciting roles, five male five female, are being held on Sunday 8th and Monday 9th December 2019. The characters cover a wide age range from 18 to 60 including two young women (one vivacious the other very proper), an insane inmate of Bedlam asylum, an upright solicitor, plus of course the Prince of Darkness himself.

Set in the 1890s, the narrative follows Count Dracula’s attempt to move from Transylvania to England, seeking, what else, but new blood. From the remote Yorkshire coast to the crowded streets of London, the struggle to stop his vampiric reign begins.
Director John Wakeman said: “This bold modern adaptation is by renowned poet and playwright Liz Lochhead and stays unnervingly close to Bram Stoker’s original nightmare tale.”

An informal reading is being held at the theatre on Friday 6th December at 7.45pm when newcomers are particularly welcome. Dracula runs from 28th March to 4th April 2020 and tickets are now available from 

Dracula by Liz Lochhead – open casting call (with playing ages)
​
Lucy Westerman/Bride of Dracula (18-25) – a vivacious young woman who strains at the bounds of Victorian society, with horrifying results.

Mina Westerman (20-30s) – an intelligent yet proper young lady conforming to Victorian norms and engaged to Jonathan Harker.

Florrie Hathersage/Bride of Dracula (18-25) – maid to the Westerman household, young but worldly.

Mrs Manners/Doctor Goldman/Bride of Dracula (40s+) – Mrs Manners, housekeeper to the Westermans. Doctor Goldman, an intellectual who views her patients as objects of study

Nurse Nesbitt, Grice (40s +) – one character with opposing personalities, sadist/masochist, working at Bedlam.

Dracula/Drinkwater (ageless) – Dracula the Prince of Darkness, pure evil, charming, sophisticated. Drinkwater, an orderly at Bedlam.

Arthur Seward (20s-40s) – old school acquaintance of Jonathan, consulting physician to Renfield at Bedlam, suitor to Lucy.

Jonathan Harker (20s-40s) – fiancé to Mina, up-and-coming solicitor, encounters Dracula on a business trip to Eastern Europe.

Professor Van Helsing (50+) – the one person familiar with vampires and how to fight them.

Renfield (30s-60s) – inmate at Bedlam. Prior encounters with Dracula have left him insane and an unwilling accomplice.
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For further information please contact:

Flavia Bateson
Chesil Theatre Marketing Team
01962 855544
flavia.bateson@starspray.org

Chesil Theatre Winchester’s New Year production will be Henrik Ibsen’s classic tragedy Ghosts and open auditions are being held on 13th and 14th October 2019. The play is a scathing commentary on 19th century morals and offers challenging roles for two women and three men.
 
At the centre of the narrative is Helene Alving, a widow, wanting to escape the ghosts of her earlier life but as the drama unfolds she learns that present consequences are brought about by past actions. This award-winning adaptation is by former National Theatre Director Richard Eyre.
 
Director Peter Andrews comments:
“This play shocked 19th-century audiences because of its comment on religion, incest, and inherited disease but this contemporary production gives it enormous freshness and power”.
 
An informal reading is being held at the theatre on 11th October at 7.45pm when newcomers are particularly welcome. Ghosts runs from 25th January to 1st February 2020 and tickets are now available from www.chesiltheatre.org.uk
 
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​In Praise of Love by Terence Rattigan
Saturday September 28th - Saturday October 5th
Matinee Sunday September 29th 2.30pm

The new season at the Chesil Theatre, Winchester, opens with In Praise of Love, a tender and deeply moving play by a master of twentieth century theatre, Terence Rattigan. 

Sebastian Crutwell, an acerbic arts critic on a Sunday newspaper, keeps the world at bay with his aggressively mocking banter. His reluctance, or inability, to admit his true feelings for his wife, Lydia and son, Joey,  results in him talking to them in the same witty, but detached, style.

Lydia knows she has polyarteritus but shields Sebastian from the knowledge. However, he also knows and in turn is trying to protect her. We learn of the hidden truths and reticent emotions in this marriage when both confide in their friend, Mark. It is ironic that they can confess their passion more easily to other people than to each other.

Director, Norma York, said: "In Praise of Love, Rattigan's penultimate play, is packed with allusions to his own life and those of his friends. He was particularly inspired by  Rex Harrison's decision not to inform his beautiful wife, the actress, Kay Kendall of her terminal diagnosis." 

The play opens on Saturday September 28th and runs until October 5th at 7.45pm with a matinee on Sunday 29th at 2.30pm.Tickets from £12 available from our online booking facility.

Reading: Friday August 30 7.45pm
Auditions: Sunday September 2 7.45pm
                   Monday September 3 7.45pm
All at the Chesil Theatre

Production dates Saturday November 16 - November 23
 
This classic, fast-moving and riotous farce by Neil Simon, is about the dinner party from hell.  The American playwright and screenwriter  is widely regarded as one of the most successful, prolific and performed playwrights in the world and Rumours is one of his funniest with quick firing wit and repartee from the start.
 
Four well-to-do couples gather at the home of rising politician, Charley, and his wife Vivian for a wedding anniversary celebration. But where are the host and hostess? Where are the servants who should be preparing the meal? Charley is found with a shotgun wound to his ear. No-one must know. So the excuses, deceptions, confusion and outright lies begin for they must stop the rumour that he has tried to commit suicide .
 
​This version is adapted to take place in a British context, so American accents are not required. 

Director, Flavia Bateson said: "There are challenging, but also enormously entertaining, parts for four men, four women and two roles which can be male or female with playing ages : 30s - 50s.
We always welcome newcomers at the reading and auditions."
 

Rehearsals are already underway for the first production, In Praise of Love by Terence Rattigan, which opens on September 28th.  This is a deeply moving drama about hidden truths and feelings in Sebastian and Lydia Crutwell’s marriage. They are protecting each other from the knowledge of Lydia’s terminal illness. Rattigan’s pitch-perfect dialogue combines comedy and heart-rending pathos.
 
The Chesil set building team are renowned for their skills. The November show, Rumours by Neil Simon, will certainly challenge them. The classic, fast-moving, and riotous farce about the dinner party from hell requires two storeys, a staircase and several doors all of which must open and close at inopportune moments.  
 
An exciting new adaptation of, Ghosts by Richard Eyre, is the first play in 2020. Eyre, who led the Royal National Theatre for ten years, has brought enormous freshness and power to Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece.
 
A stunning version by Liz Lochhead of Dracula is the March production. Lochhead, who wrote Blood and Ice the story behind Frankenstein performed at the Chesil in 2017, has packed this classic tale with theatricality and energy. 
 
In complete contrast May brings a perceptive and amusing play A Fine Bright Day Today by Philip Goulding. Margaret has been a widow for 30 years and is set in her ways. Her daughter persuades her to take an American artist as a lodger -  with disruptive results.
 
The biennial outdoor production in July is A Midsummer Night's Dream, many people’s favourite Shakespearian comedy. The Bishop's Garden, Wolvesey Palace, is the perfect venue for the magical worlds of Oberon and Titania, young runaway Athenians and Bottom and his friends rehearsing their play, to come together in a night of midsummer madness. The large cast will involve members of the Youth Theatre.
 
The two groups, which meet on Mondays and Wednesdays from September, will also be having fun learning theatre skills as they prepare for their show in February 2020 : James and the Giant Peach and The Witches.
 
All auditions are open and publicised on the website. New members are always welcome to these and to the coffee mornings which take place on the first Saturday of every month. More details can be found on the website chesiltheatre.org.uk
 
Tickets for all these Chesil shows may be booked now online. Last season two shows sold out well before the opening night.   
 

In Praise of Love by Terence Rattigan
 
Reading Friday June 21 7.45pm
Auditions Sunday June 23 7.45pm
                Monday June 24 7.45pm

All at the Chesil Theatre

​Production dates Saturday September 28 - October 5
 
A deeply moving drama, In Praise of Love  by Terence Rattigan,is the first production of the new season at the Chesil Theatre, Winchester. The play explores the often hidden truths and feelings in a long marriage. Sebastian and Lydia Crutwell insist on protecting each other from the knowledge of Lydia's terminal illness. Their unspoken anxieties and deep love is portrayed in Rattigan's pitch perfect dialogue which combines gentle comedy with heart-rending pathos.
 
Rattigan, one of the great dramatists of the last century, was inspired to write the play by the way Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall lived in the last months before her untimely death, aged just 32, of myeloid leukaemia. Rex Harrison kept this from his vivacious actress wife who believed she was suffering from an iron deficiency.
 
Director, Norma York said: "There are challenging parts for one woman and three men, one in his twenties. We always welcome newcomers at the reading and auditions."
 
Editorial Note
 
Contact Lisbeth Rake 01794 388245 The.rakes@zen.co.uk

The Chesil Theatre, Winchester, is honoured to be one of the first amateur companies in the country to secure the rights to present Lucy Kirkwood's The Children as the May production. This play opened at the Royal Court Theatre London in November 2016, three years after Kirkwood's multi-award winning Chimerica took the West End and Broadway by storm. Kirkwood updated and developed ideas in that play to create the highly acclaimed four part programme seen on Channel 4.
 
Lucy Kirkwood, who  is still only 34, has been described as the most rewarding dramatist of her generation. The Children was the Winner of the 2018 Writers Guild Best Play UK and in the same year she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its "40 Under 40" initiative. When the play moved to the  USA  it was nominated for a Best Play Tony Award.
 
Retired nuclear physicists, Hazel and Robin move to an isolated cottage as the world around them crumbles. One day, Rose, an old friend and former colleague they haven’t seen for many years arrives. She has a challenging request.
 
Director Lisbeth Rake said: "This rich and beautifully written play is both moving and funny. It examines a long marriage and the way the friendships of youth reverberate in old age  whilst provoking questions that will develop in the mind long after the lights have faded."
 
Production Dates Saturday May 18 - Saturday May 25
Matinee Sunday May 19 4pm
 
Tickets from £10 available from chesiltheatre.org.uk, 0333 666 3366 (booking fee applies)

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime by Oscar Wilde adapted by Constance Cox

Performance Dates Saturday July 13 - July 20 2019
 
Reading Friday May 3 at 7.45pm
Auditions Saturday May 4 and Sunday May 5 Time 7.45pm

A comedy of mishaps, mayhem, muddle and murder, not to mention matrimony, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime is the summer production at the Chesil.  Adapted by Constance Cox from a short story by Oscar Wilde, it tells of the honourable Arthur's decision to postpone his wedding to the beautiful Sibyl until he has committed a dastardly deed as foretold by a reader of palms.
 
But who will be the victim?
 
Aided by his trusty butler, Baines, and an inept anarchist, Herr Winkelkopf, Arthur puts his and Sibyl's relatives in peril only to have all his plans to dispose of elderly aunts and uncles thwarted by the good intentions of others.
 
There are ten roles, five male and five female with ages ranging between 20 and 70. New members are always welcome.
 
Director, Malcolm Brown, has set the play in 1925. He said: " “This is an out and out comedy in the traditions of Jeeves and Wooster, Carry On . . and Frasier but it has a darker comical element which will have you chuckling all the way home.”
 
The reading on 3 May is a social occasion not an audition. You don't have to be a member, simply turn up and read or just listen.

Saturday 23 to Saturday 30 March 2019 7.45pm
Matinee Sunday March 24 4pm
 
Tickets from £10 available from chesiltheatre.org.uk
0333 666 3366 (booking fee applies)
 
The spring production at the Chesil Theatre, Winchester is The Real Thing, first presented in 1982 and thought of as Tom Stoppard's most personal play. Stoppard, then aged 45, had written several successful and critically acclaimed plays such Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Travesties and Jumpers.
 
The Real Thing features Henry, the smartest playwright of his generation, now a recognised success, whose wife Charlotte has been appearing in his latest triumph about a couple whose marriage is on the verge of collapse. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie. When Henry’s passionate affair with Annie threatens to destroy both marriages, Henry realises life has started imitating art.
 
The Real Thing combines Stoppard's intellectual and dazzling wordplay with some of his most tender and touching writing, as he examines his own life for this poignant story of the search for love which is "the real thing". This clever, witty and entertaining examination of fidelity and trust is a multi award-winning modern classic.
 
Director Marcus Whitfield said: "It’s a challenge and a privilege to help my talented cast bring such a brilliant piece of writing alive on the Chesil stage. Stoppard’s deeply insightful play speaks volumes to all of us who have wrestled with life and love. I look forward to seeing you there!"

​Booking here.
 

​Production Dates Saturday May 18 - Saturday May 25
Matinee Sunday May 19 4pm
 
Reading Friday March 8 7.45pm
Auditions Saturday March 9 4pm
Sunday March 10 7.45pm
 
It usually takes many years before a new play is released for amateur performance. The Chesil Theatre, Winchester is delighted, therefore  that it has been granted the rights to present Lucy Kirkwood's The Children in May 2019
 
The play was the Winner of the 2018 Writers’ Guild Best Play Award and nominated for a Tony when it moved to the Broadway USA.
 
Lucy Kirkwood, who was only 32 when she wrote the play, has been described as one of the most rewarding dramatists of her generation. In The Children she has created three finely drawn characters, all in their sixties. Two retired nuclear physicists Hazel and Robin move to an isolated cottage near the sea as the world around them crumbles. One day there’s a new arrival, Rose, an old friend and former colleague they haven’t seen for many years. Why has she come and why does she seem to know her way round the cottage?
 
Director Lisbeth Rake said: "This rich and beautifully written play is both moving and funny whilst provoking questions that will develop in the mind long after the lights have faded."