Strut & Fret Bring Their Hit Show LOOK BEHIND YOU To The Tabard After 25 Years

Look Behind You? Look who's back! Five-star company Strut & Fret & their hit show Look Behind You return to  the Tabard, after 25 years, in a marvelously modern, radical revival ‘Look Behind You' by Daniel Wain.

In the 1990s, Strut & Fret were the darlings of both the London and Edinburgh fringe, with  five-star reviews and sell-out audiences. In 1999, they staged their swansong, Look Behind  You by Daniel Wain, at the Tabard Theatre, Chiswick. It was an artistic and commercial hit,  with the script published by Josef Weinberger and subsequently staged by other theatre  companies across the UK. 

Now, 25 years later, both Strut & Fret and Look Behind You are back, and at the Tabard again! 

Writer Daniel Wain has radically revised and modernised his “beautifully original”, “cracking”  and “razor-sharp” original script. Gone are the payphone and fan mail, to be replaced by  mobiles and social media. More importantly, the show previously described as “Noises Off in  Pantoland” now has far more satirical sting, more political punch. It's still very funny and  poignant, but now also critiques the state of modern Britain. 

Look Behind You follows the ups, and largely downs, of a professional theatre company  staging the stock panto Dick Whittington in a godforsaken seaside town. While the ‘happy ever-after' panto plays onstage, we see the behind-the-scenes reality. The Britannia Theatre  is falling down. Nothing works. There's no money, no support, no hope. This is the end of  the road, the end of the pier. The developers and foreign investors are circling… 

Look Behind You is not only a contemporary metaphor for the state of our nation, but, more  merrily, an antidote to the classic seasonal slush. Staged in January, immediately after  everyone else has produced their traditional panto, it reveals the grit and graft behind the  glitz and glitter. Is the nation's sweetheart really so sweet? How can one entertain other  people's kids hundreds of miles from one's own? Is Dick really an ideal partner for Pussy?

The theme and tone of the original Look Behind You returns as strong as before, but Daniel  Wain's considerable rewrite reflects how much has changed in the intervening 25 years.  Wain himself returns, not just as writer but as actor (theatre manager Sam and his panto alter  ego Sarah the Cook), with Cait Chidgey (now Cait Hart Dyke) also reprising her role from a  quarter-century ago, although her Russian ‘Bond girl' is now a reality TV star from Essex!  Designer Richard Evans recreates his original “West End-worthy” (The Stage) set. 

In addition, Marc Brenner, the director of the original 1999 Look Behind You and now one of  British theatre's leading photographers, returns to shoot the new production, while Flavia  Fraser-Cannon, an assistant stage manager on the 1999 show, returns as PR consultant. So  much has changed, some things remain the same… 

In summary: 

Strut & Fret return with their highly successful, subsequently published hit Look  Behind You, 25 years after the original five-star, sell-out production of 1999 • At the original venue (the Tabard), with many of the original creatives, albeit some in  markedly different roles 

In a radically revised version by original writer Daniel Wain, now reflecting the state of  modern Britain 

Oh, and it's still very, very funny… 

Strut & Fret was founded in 1995 to take Michael Frayn's iconic farce Noises Off to the  Edinburgh Festival Fringe and received glowing five-star reviews and a sell-out run as a result – “it is difficult to imagine any show on the Fringe funnier than this” (The Scotsman). They  returned to Edinburgh for the following two years before starting to produce solely in  London. Look Behind You, produced at the Tabard in December 1999, proved to be Strut &  Fret's swansong. 

Until, in 2019, Strut & Fret staged their first show in two decades: a highly successful  production of Ronald Harwood's The Dresser at Hampton Hill Theatre. Due to the critical  success of this production, Strut & Fret determined to take another show up to the 2020  Edinburgh Fringe. Sadly, this was cancelled due to the pandemic. However, Strut & Fret  appeared at the Camden Fringe in 2021 with Maybe It's Because (two monologues by Ben  Francis), and in September 2022 staged Ben Brown's Larkin With Women at the Old Red Lion  Theatre. The centenary of the poet's birth proved the ideal opportunity to re-evaluate Philip  Larkin as writer, lover and human being.

Theatre at the Tabard, 2 Bath Road, London, W4 1LW 

Wednesday 17th January to Saturday 3rd February 2024 

Press Nights: Thursday 18th and Friday 19th January 2024 @ 7.30pm 

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