A Brew to a Kill!

by Eli Murton

seen at the Hogs Back Brewery, Tongham on 24 October 2026

Matt Pinches directs Jack Whitam as Richard Gloucester (part owner of the brewery), Emma Fenney as his sister Edwina, Robert Maskell as Tommy Tyrell his business associate, and Laura Smithers as Anne Prior (the managing director of the rival Priory Ales) in the Guildford Shakespeare Company's murder mystery play A Brew to a Kill!, with the Shakespearean-themed subtitle Ale's Well that Ends Well - or does it?

The audience is presumed to be the great and good of Tongham invited to the opening of the Hogs Back Brewery's new Tea Room in 1954; after the official ribbon-cutting presided over by the Mayor proceedings are interrupted by the discovery of George Gloucester's body emerging from the "new" hop drier. The surviving siblings, together with Tommy Tyrell and Anne Prior, are all keen to solve the mystery of who killed George before the police arrive, and the audience is co-opted to help. The 1950s setting pays tribute to the classics of the genre as well as providing useful back stories for the characters involving the Second World War and safely placing the action before the proliferation of modern technology.

From the outset it is clear that all four characters have the motive and the opportunity to do away with the feckless George, who had a drinking problem and was ruining the business by financial mismanagement. The audience, divided into four teams, is directed to circulate to different rooms on the site to visit the shop containing written clues and to interview separately Richard, Tommy, Edwina and Anne (the order in which our team met them) to try to discover the murderer, the means and the motive (all three required to gain a suitable accolade). 

The cast relied to some extent on the teams managing to ask suitably leading questions: one felt that certain lines of enquiry led to assured expository speeches while unexpected questions resulted in uncertain responses. Some questions, of course, only met with stonewalling (Tommy was particularly good at this technique). In the event, none of the teams at our performance solved the case, but this hardly impacted the pleasure of attempting the challenge. Even poor weather failed to dampen our spirits as we were guided to various outbuildings to conduct our investigations.

Apart from the classic requirements of a whodunnit mystery - the proliferation of motive and opportunities, the closely bound group of suspects, and the difficulty of winnowing out insignificant clues and red herrings in order to recognise what really mattered - there were also some amusing in-jokes for a company with Shakespeare in its name. Richard Gloucester is clearly a reference to Richard of Gloucester the third son of the Duke of York in the Henry VI plays and ultimately King Richard III, who marries an Anne from a rival allegiance in Richard III; in the Shakespeare plays his elder brothers are Edward (thus Edwina) and George (who dies, or more accurately is killed, by drowning in a barrel of wine). Tyrell is employed by King Richard to murder his nephews (the so-called "Princes in the Tower") and so is a suitable name for the somewhat shady Tommy. Bad Shakespearean puns abound: the Guildford Shakespeare Company is clearly having as much fun as the audience.

Love's Labour's Lost

by William Shakespeare

seen in the gardens of Braboeuf Manor, Guildford on 25 July 2026

The Guildford Shakespeare Company and the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond have created joint open-air productions of both Love's Labour's Lost and Much Ado About Nothing for their summer seasons (quite usual for the GSC, but particularly apt for the Orange Tree, the auditorium for which is undergoing major renovations this summer). Tom Littler from the Orange Tree directs a cast of ten in the two plays, and he has devised ways to link them so that they appear to deal with the same characters before and after the Second World War. This is achieved by a few textual adjustments, but principally by assigning character names from each play to four couples and some assorted others. Thus the plays are linked more explicitly than in a similar exercise presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company eleven years ago (the RSC placed the plays on either side of the First World War and disposed the members of the cast differently).

In Love's Labour's Lost the four young male courtiers of the original are perfectly plausible as 1930's Oxbridge undergraduates (or perhaps they have recently graduated), their aspirations for living hopelessly out of touch with the world of real relationships and awkwardly insistent feelings. The visiting ladies soon scupper their idealistic fantasy of a three year retreat from feminine company, but the social comedy remains untouched almost until the end by the weightier matters of the real world. Even the lesser characters, decidedly from lower social strata, are ostensibly free from want or anxiety.

As in Much Ado (seen last week) James Sheldon gives a tremendously assured performance as Berowne/Benedick, a vital asset as these two characters (here presented as essentially the same person) must be convincing and charismatic for the plays to succeed as entertainment. The supporting cast manages the elaborate wordplay of Love's Labour's Lost with great panache, and often at dazzling speed, allowing us to be impressed by their mastery of the text rather than bamboozled by the now unfamiliar rhetorical wizardry.

The brittle make-believe world of the play is famously shattered in its concluding moments by the arrival of an unavoidably serious message for the Princess: the death of her father. The desperate and perhaps forlorn attempts of the young couples to retrieve something from this interruption by promises to revive their interest in one another after a suitable period of mourning, reflection and seeing to their new responsibilities is handled with due sobriety, and we the audience have some inkling that these four pairs of young people will have a "second chance" in the later Much Ado About Nothing.

The play ends with contrasting Spring and Winter songs concerning respectively the cuckoo and the owl. The text does not assign the songs to characters previously named; in this production Costard (here, an innkeeper) takes the lyrics for spring and Holofernes those for winter. At first they recited them, which had the curious effect of reminding me of reciting poetry in primary school classes, before they were repeated in song. I have seen productions in which the tunes for the two parts were utterly different, reflecting their different seasons, but here the same tune was used throughout. The overall effect was surprisingly poignant: the world of easy love-play was certainly giving way to something more serious.

Much Ado about Nothing

by William Shakespeare

seen in the gardens of Braboeuf Manor, Guildford on 18 July 2026

The Guildford Shakespeare Company and the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond have created joint open-air productions of both Love's Labour's Lost and Much Ado About Nothing for their summer seasons (quite usual for the GSC, but particularly apt for the Orange Tree, the auditorium for which is undergoing major renovations this summer). Tom Littler from the Orange Tree directs a cast of ten in the two plays, and he has devised ways to link them so that they appear to deal with the same characters before and after the Second World War. This is achieved by a few textual adjustments, but principally by assigning character names from each play to four couples and some assorted others. Thus the plays are linked more explicitly than in a similar exercise presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company eleven years ago (the RSC placed the plays on either side of the First World War and disposed the members of the cast differently).

By chance I have seen the "second" play first, and have thus watched the soldiers returning from the war, variously affected by its violence: Benedick Berowne suffers nightmares, while the affable Longeuville has become the treacherous John. But the linkings are a minor matter; the principal pleasure is to be gained from the excellence of the production of a fine play. Beatrice (Phoebe Pryce) and Benedick (James Sheldon) remain the dazzling sparring couple perfectly believable in the heady days of victory in the mid-1940s, while the plot to denigrate Hero (Joëlle Brabant) and humiliate Claudio (Chirag Benedict Lobo) unfolds around them in a milieu where mistrust could very easily develop due to the years-long parting of sweethearts. The comic village constabulary with the pompous Dogberry (Matt Pinches, doubling also as the villainous John) in charge are suitably re-imagined as members of the local home guard in a nod to Dad's Army.

In a corner of the extensive gardens of the former Guildford College of Law the setting was imagined to be a rural village pub festooned with victory bunting but apparently not much used during the war years. Great trees provided a magnificent backdrop and a vital sounding board, and also much needed shade for the actors in a matinee performance (the audience was less fortunate in this respect). Once again the GSC has provided a really enjoyable al fresco production of a Shakespeare play.

David Copperfield

by Abigail Pickard Price based on the novel by Charles Dickens

seen at Holy Trinity Church Guildford on 14 February 2026

Abigail Pickard Price directs Eddy Payne as David, and Luke Barton and Louise Beresford playing all the other parts, in her own adaptation of Charles Dickens's David Copperfield for the Guildford Shakespeare Company, with Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches assisting in the adaptation.

In an ambitious move, David both tells his own story and acts in it (reflecting the narrative voice of the novel) while the many characters he meets with are portrayed by the two supporting actors employing fast costume changes and prodigious feats of memory and energy. The extremely tall Luke Barton is a natural fit for the strong young fisherman Ham, but he also looms large as Peggotty, David's childhood nurse (as an adult remembered from infancy would seem large in recollection), a frightening Mr Murdstone rendered even more terrifying by being faceless, and a chilling Mrs Steerforth. In a more genial mood he makes a delightful Mr Micawber and an engaging Mr Dick amongst others. In the meantime Louise Beresford takes on the various more feminine parts - Mother, Aunt Betsey, Mrs Micawber, Emily, Dora and Agnes - but also the dangerous James Steerforth and the cringing Uriah Heep. Since many of the scenes cleverly required only three characters this is largely manageable, but there are extraordinary exceptions when it is necessary to have Emily and Steerforth dancing together, and later when Mr Micawber finally denounces Heep, achieved by an inspired sleight of hand with the costumes.

Dickens's characters are often thought to be verging on caricatures rather than 'real' people, but in an adaptation such as this, the broad strokes of his characterisations are ideally suited to the speedy appearance and re-appearance of familiar faces identified by particular postures or turns of phrase, and the sheer pace and skill required to keep the story rolling and the characters clear for the audience matches the headlong style for which Dickens was famous: even with only three actors the stage seemed to teem with characters just as the novel does. The childhood scenes veer from happiness to horror; the Micawbers survive by the skin of their teeth; the Trotwood household is suitably eccentric; David's marriage to Dora is cloying and disastrous as it should be without being over-sentimentalised; and the tragedy of the family in Yarmouth so disastrously introduced to Steerforth by the naive David is surprisingly poignant even if the tidying away of awkward consequences to Australia now seems too easy. Perhaps the long-suffering and patient Agnes does not get her due - but this is arguably a fault in the novel too.

By careful plotting and wise pruning the essential elements of the novel were all present, with only a few lesser characters excised in the streamlining necessary to present a coherent story even with such versatile resources - no Barkis being willing, no Miss Murdstone adding to the oppressive atmosphere in David's childhood home, no Rosa Dartle mysteriously scarred by Steerforth, no Traddles and only a fleeting vestige of Uriah Heep's even more 'umble mother. But in the full flow of action these would only have added needless complications, and what was presented was a hugely enjoyable entertainment.

The Comedy of Errors

by William Shakespeare 

and

A Company of Rascals

by Phil Porter

seen at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford on 24 and 25 July 2025 

The Guildford Shakespeare Company has created a fascinating double bill directed by Joanna Read and designed by Neil Irish, whereby a new play by Phil Porter, A Company of Rascals, is entwined round Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. After a scene-setting prologue which takes place on the banks of the River Wey outside the theatre, the Comedy is enacted in the main auditorium. Audiences for both plays see the new prologue and the Comedy's first scene, after which those seeing Rascals leave the auditorium and are taken to three different locations nearby to watch what the characters of the Comedy are imagined to be doing when they are not on stage; the two audiences are reintegrated for the final scene of the Comedy in which "all is revealed".

Shakespeare's play involves proliferating misunderstandings when two sets of identical twins, each separated in infancy due to a complicated shipwreck, are continually mistaken for each other not only by the residents of Ephesus where one of each pair lives as master and servant, but also by each other, because the other pair (also a master and servant) have arrived unexpectedly in town. By an improbable sleight of hand, which can't be called into question without destroying the whole basis of the farce, each master has retained the name Antipholus, and each servant the name Dromio, and each named twin dresses alike, thus allowing all the mistakes (or errors) to occur until finally all four are on stage together - and even then there is still room for confusion. 

The new play, set variously in the Centaur Inn (where the visitors have chosen to stay), in Doctor Pinch's premises, and in the Porpentine (where the resident Antipholus has dined when unable to enter his own house), capitalises on the mistaken identities wherever possible, but also follows the progress of the golden chain commissioned by the Ephesian Antipholus through many more hands than merely the goldsmith and the visiting Antipholus as seen in the Comedy, and also follows the continuing misfortunes of Egeon, the elderly Syracusan merchant arrested at the beginning of the play. Where the Comedy relies on chance meetings and displays of verbal wit, Rascals introduces madcap physical comedy with swapped bags, outright chicanery, and bravura charlatanry.

The cast of twelve expertly manages to perform both plays at once (though the audience of course can only see one of them at a time), aided in the case of Comedy by some extended pauses between scenes which are gloriously filled with 1960s pop songs (it's a modern-dress production). Cleverly, the new play focusses more on the minor characters of the Comedy, giving particular prominence to the jailer, and ludicrously making him the twin brother of Doctor Pinch to explain cast doubling, and introducing a few new characters to fill out the town scene.

Fortuitously I saw Comedy first and Rascals second, which I think is probably the most satisfactory order: the new play enriches the older even in retrospect, and its fast-paced double-dealings and general context require familiarity with the Comedy for maximum effect. The two together made for a really enjoyable theatrical experience.  

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

seen at Racks Close Guildford on 17 June 2022

Abigail Anderson directs A Midsummer Night's Dream, the first play this summer's season by the Guildford Shakespeare Company, performed in Racks Close, a hilly park in the centre of Guildford. A cast of nine take on the twenty speaking roles, though intriguingly Titania's four servants are never actually seen; only Rosaline Blessed has a single role as Nic Bottom. As is almost traditonal, Theseus and Oberon were twinned (Jim Creighton), matched by Hippolyta and Titania (Johanne Murdock).

The play began in the picnic area, which was perhaps a too difficult acoustic for some of the audience. However, once the Mechanicals had arrived, ostensibly from among the picnickers, and distributed their parts, the audience was invited to walk up to the proper acting area where seats were provided before an amphitheatre-like stage. Here it was much easier to follow the proceedings, and the setting was ideal for the night's events in the forest.

The opening scene was played 'straight', that is, with no hint that the suavity of Theseus's words to Hippolyta might be masking a fairly brutal marriage arrangement, and no hint from Hippolyta that she might find the Athenian laws affecting Hermia in any way distasteful or wrong. (The long recriminations between Oberon and Titania were also curtailed.) The travails of the four young people were thus related only to their own misaligned loves and Puck's mismanagement of the magic flower; creating a light-hearted entertainment on a balmy summer's night. The brutality of the courtiers' disparagement of the Mechanicals' play was considerably watered down by the fact that only Theseus, Hippolyta and Philostrate were witnessing it - the two pairs of lovers were busy being various Mechanicals, and the members of the court were seated among the real audience with many of their harshest comments cut. Again, the effect was to lighten the mood, without detrcting from the ridiculousness of the Pyramus and Thisbe play: as should be expected Bottom provided a spectacularly over-the-top death scene.

Robin Goodfellow (Daniel Krikler) was an engaging Puck, at one point riding a unicycle, and appearing on stilts at the beginning of the second half. He was far too cheerful to be downcast by his mistakes or Oberon's displeasure, and thought nothing of scaling the tree in the centre of the stage to watch the foolish mortals from above. The sound design by Matt Eaton augmented his magical side by throwing his voice around through cunningly placed speakers, and this feature was also put to excellent use in directing the audience's attenton to the invisible Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed and Peaseblossom.

All in all, a delightful way to enjoy an outdoor version of the play.