A better Easter bet than Jerry Springer?
On April 9th, the touring Cambridge-based Cameo Theatre Company will be playing in St Cyriac's...
"GIVEN THAT JERRY SPRINGER: THE MUSICAL is at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in Holy Week, we thought some theatregoers might like a play more appropriate to the season" says Rex Walford, who is directing R F Delderfield's classic play SPARK IN JUDEA this Easter. Cambridge-based Cameo Theatre Company are touring the play in a variety of Cambridgeshire venues over the Easter period and are coming to St Cyriac's Church in Swaffham Prior on Sunday April 9th at 4.00 p.m.
They also play at Ely Cathedral (April 2nd), Haslingfield (April 7th) and St Ives (April 12th) before finishing their tour with two performances at St Mark's Cambridge on Good Friday and Easter Eve.
Cameo have produced several major pieces of Christian drama in recent years including a dramatisation of the whole of the New Testament to mark the Millennium and, in 2004, a first theatre staging of the twelve plays of Dorothy L Sayers' radiocycle THE MAN BORN TO BE KING. Most recently, in autumn 2005 they toured East Anglia with CELL TALK (about Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe of Lynn) and also presented the large-cast musical WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND in Cambridge.
Rex Walford says "We are thrilled to have re-discovered this almost forgotten full-length play, which Delderfield himself regarded as his best work. It is exciting theatre and presents the events of Holy Week in a fresh and surprising light. It's a beautifully crafted piece and all our experienced cast are finding it a genuine pleasure to be working with that tried and trusted formula 'the well-made play'".
Delderfield is a twentieth-century novelist of distinction (e.g. To Serve Them All Their Days, A Horseman Riding By - both turned into big TV series) as well as a successful playwright. His comedy WORMS EYE VIEW ran for five years in the West End, post-war. In SPARK IN JUDEA he forsakes his usual contemporary domestic settings, and brings his gifts for easy dialogue and rounded characterisation to the HolyWeek story.
The play is set in Pilate's imperial headquarters and has a cast of twelve (nine men and three women). The events of the Week are seen from the point of view of the Roman Governor, who has a failing marriage and impatient younger officers to deal with, as well as problems with the Sanhedrin and with workers building an aqueduct. To complicate matters, he has reluctantly to deal with the trial of Jesus, whom he has previously admired through an encounter in Samaria. The play moves to a spell-binding and unexpected climax as the events of Holy Week unfold.
Tickets for the Swaffham Prior performance can be obtained by phoning 01638-743983