NT Live to Broadcast LONDON ASSURANCE Starring Shaw and Beale 6/28

London Assurance

- Due to overwhelming demand in the U.K., the National has decided to add a bonus fifth NT Live event this season, the sold-out hit play, London Assurance. Starring Fiona Shaw and Simon Russell Beale, directed by NT Artistic Director Nicholas Hytner, you can read about this very funny production at this link:
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/54546/productions/london-assurance.html

- We are able to extend the offer to you to participate in this pilot season bonus screening. We will announce the addition of London Assurance to the NT line up, during live exhibition of The Habit of Art.

- The live exhibition date of London Assurance is Monday, June 28 at 7 PM UK/8 PM Central Europe. The U.S. / Canadian sites can exhibit the same day (or within 30 days of the live exhibition).

Sir Harcourt Courtly is lured away from the epicentre of fashionable London by the promise of a rich and beautiful bride, Grace, several decades his junior. Arriving at Oak Hall, Gloucestershire, he marvels at this rural Venus until her charms are eclipsed by her hearty cousin, the foxhunting Lady Gay Spanker. Meanwhile his disguised son turns up in flight from his creditors and falls head over heels for Grace. When Lady Spanker discovers the young couple, she needs little prompting from the visiting chancer Dazzle to lead Sir Harcourt astray.

I am about to present society with a second Lady Courtly: young - blushing eighteen; lovely - I have her portrait; rich - I have her banker's account. An heiress and a Venus!

Dion Boucicault, the Irish genius of London theatre in the age of Dickens, wrote the brilliantly funny London Assurance in 1841 and thereby created - in Sir Harcourt and Lady Spanker - two of the great comic roles of the English stage, played at the NT by Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw.

Give me the trumpet neigh, the spotted pack just catching scent. What a chorus in their yelp! The view-halloo, blent with a peal of free and fearless mirth! That's our old English music - match it where you can.

For more information, visit www.nationaltheatre.org.uk.

To post a comment, you must register and login.