World Premiere of CONSTANCE Set for the King's Head Theatre

Olivier Award Winning company Good Night Out Presents will stage the world premiere of the only unproduced Oscar Wilde play this September at their Islington home, the King's Head Theatre.

William Daventry, a rich industrialist and self-made man, is married to Constance, the perfect wife: loyal, faithful, and with excellent family credentials. At the Daventry's country house, various members of Constance's extended family, a zealous man of the cloth and his flirtatious wife are assembled for an evening of entertainment - such as is affordable only by the middle classes, a fact deplored by the Duchess of Sandgate and her companion, Sir Richard. An incident between the Reverend's wife and Daventry sets in motion a train of events that risk upsetting the moral code of this aristocratic family, driving them from Twickenham to London to the Tyrolean Alps.

After his release from prison in 1897, Oscar Wilde immediately began writing a new play, CONSTANCE. Wilde sold what he claimed were "exclusive rights" to a number of theatrical agents, publishers, actors and managers, eventually handing over his handwritten manuscript to an American actress, Mrs Cora Brown Potter. On her death in the 1930s the manuscript passed onto the French writer Guillot de Saix, who with a colleague Henri de Briel, put together a French translation.

Henri de Briel was suspected of being a collaborator with the Germans during World War II, and Wilde's original English manuscript is thought to have been destroyed by members of the resistance movement when they caught up with him. However, a copy of the French translation survived in Guillot de Saix's possession, and in due course was published in a French literary magazine.

CONSTANCE was unearthed by Wilde enthusiast and writer, Charles Osborne, many years later. Osborne has translated the play back into English, recreating for the world a genuine, brand new, Oscar Wilde play. Following the success of Good Night Out Presents' Tennessee Williams world premieres at The c*ckTavern Theatre earlier this year, Charles has asked Artistic Director Adam Spreadbury-Maher and Executive Producer Dominic Haddock to bring CONSTANCE to the stage for the first time.

Playwright Oscar Wilde, born in 1854, wrote such plays as The Importance of being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, Salome and Lady Windemere's Fan. Wilde was imprisoned at the peak of his career for indecency. After his release Wilde was exiled and spent the remainder of his life in Europe where he died in 1900, estranged from his wife and two sons, aged only 46.

Adaptor Charles Osborne, born in 1927, was Literature Director of the Arts Council of Great Britain, and chief theatre critic of the London Daily Telegraph from 1986 to 1991. He is the only author the Agatha Christie Estate has ever allowed to produce adapted works in her name. Charles lives in Southwark, London.

The King's Head Theatre is London's first pub theatre since Shakespeare's time, founded in 1970 with 50 West-End/Broadway transfers to its credit.

Multi-Award winning Adam Spreadbury-Maher became the venue's second ever Artistic Director in March 2010 and relaunched the venue with a revolutionary opera programme. The King's Head Theatre now performs in repertory, the only fringe theatre in the UK with such a bold programme
of self-produced work including the Olivier Award Winning La Boheme and Britten's The Turn of the Screw. Since 2008 Spreadbury- Maher's Production Company Good Night Out Presents has become well renowned for staging world premiers and first time revivals of work by some of the most well know and respected playwrights of the modern era, including Edward Bond, Peter Gill, Nick Ward
and Tennessee Williams. CONSTANCE continues this artistic mission.

PREVIEWS
Sept 13, 14, 15 - 7.15pm

PRESS NIGHT
Friday 16 September -7.15pm

SEASON
Tuesday - Sunday matinee
September 17 - October 23
Tickets: £15 concession, £17.50 & £22

at the King's Head Theatre
115 Upper Street
Islington N1 1QN
www.kingsheadtheatre.com
0207 478 0160

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.