www.southenddrama.co.uk

Blackadder's Christmas Carol... and other tales

Authors: Richard Curtis & Ben Elton

Director: Kay Banning

Production: 23rd - 25th November 2006

Theatre: The Eastwood Studio Theatre

Celebrating our 60th anniversary in style, Southend Drama Society are extremely proud to announce that our next production will mean the return of Edmund Blackadder to Southend in November 2006!

Blackadder's Christmas Carol follows our sell-out run with Blackadder in Summer 2003 and our winning adaptation of the Blackadder episode Ink & Incapability at the Southend Drama Festival and All England East Division Final in 2004.

For this production, the same Southend Drama Society team will be recreating the Blackadder magic for the stage once again, with adaptations of Beer from Blackadder II, a return of the award winning Ink & Incapability from Blackadder the Third, and rounding off with Blackadder's Christmas Carol.

Once again, royalties for the rights to perform this play will be donated to Comic Relief in accordance with the wishes of writers Richard Curtis and Ben Elton.

Our production of Blackadder's Christmas Carol will take place between 23rd and 25th November 2006.

To read details of our original Blackadder production in 2003, click here.

To read about our award winning run of Ink & Incapability in 2004, click here.

Beer:

Queenie: 'I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant.'

Blackadder promises to hold a rowdy drinking competition with Melchett at his house. Unfortunately, the same night, his aunt and uncle (the two most fanatical puritans in England) have invited themselves over for dinner to discuss his inheritance.

George: 'Now I've got my lovely fire I'm happy as a Frenchman who's invented a pair of self-removing trousers.'

Prince George decides he needs to shake off his reputation as England's greatest thicky, so he agrees to patronise Dr Johnson's new dictionary.

Ebenezer Blackadder: 'Mrs Scratchit, Tiny Tom is fifteen stone and he's built like a brick privy! If he eats any more heartily, he will turn into a pie shop.'

Ebenezer is the white sheep of the awful Blackadder clan. Far from being mean, spiteful, greedy and cowardly, as his Dickensian name suggests, Ebenezer is a kindly, generous man. He is visited by the spirit of Christmas who, in the spirit of A Christmas Carol, takes him through time to witness the past, present and future.