Prentis Hancock Presents Voltaire's Candide Through 4/26 At Greenwhich Playhouse
By: Gabrielle Sierra Apr. 14, 2009
Voltaire's Candide adapted and performed by PRENTIS HANCOCK, Directors: Brian Cummins and David Roylance
Scots-born; Prentis Hancock trained locally with Rose Bruford and after some years in repertory and festival theatres, was a young leading man during the Golden Age of British Television. After debuting in Dr Finlay's Casebook, he appeared in the award-winning The Last of the Mohicans with early success in the title-role Me McKenna [BBC2] leading to dozens of regular performances in series including Spy Trap, SPACE: 1999 and numerous Doctor Who stories. Hundreds of film and television roles, from Colditz to Kapatoo, through Bergerac to The Bill, includEd Scottish Television's award-winning The Bubble Boy. Many film appearances include When Eight Bells Toll, The Monster Club, Defence of the Realm, Dr Jeckyll and Mister Hyde.... He keeps his hand in on stage in London with occasional Scots revivals such as The Cut and Amongst Unbroken Hearts and travels frequently to Conventions of two Scifi cult shows, the Pinewood-made SPACE:1999 and our own Doctor Who. During the first week of Voltaire's Candide, French fans crossed the Channel and Canadian fans have flown the Atlantic to see it, bringing with them an invitation to perform the solo show next year in Austin,Texas.
TIMES: Tues-Sats@8pm: Sundays@4pm
TICKETS: £11.00 (£9.00) concessions
VENUE: GREENWICH PLAYHOUSE
BOX OFFICE: 020-8858 9256: boxoffice@galleontheatre.co.uk
http://www.voltairescandide.com‘a great voice and stage presence ... a Jackanory episode for grown-ups' The Scotsman
‘Prentis Hancock is highly engaging and a pleasure to watch' www.extraextra.org
Voltaire's Candide or Optimism was written exactly 250 years ago. The leading light of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, his much-loved loved and most-read novella remains a winner. Secretly published, Candide became an overnight success. Taking as his model, Leibniz's treatise Optimism, Voltaire explodes the thesis that the world is the ‘very best' that God can make it. This ‘philosophy' is epitomised in the character of Master Pangloss and his famous assertions that ‘All is for the best ... in the best of possible worlds'.
Remaining true to the text, Hancock portrays Voltaire as Storyteller and through his naïve, young hero Candide's adventures and mishaps, pokes fun at religion and theologians, governments and armies, philosophies and philosophers. He spares no-one, not the Church, not clerics, not Jews; neither Jesuits nor Moslems. As he cleverly shreds the 'optimist' viewpoint of the earlier philosopher, nothing is safe from his forensic gaze in this eye-popping tale. A savage, satirical lampoon at the time of writing, many of these themes remain as valid today as when they were written.
The play is a wonderful vehicle for the actor's many talents and versatile characterisations. Children chortle, teenagers laugh out loud while Mums and Dads smile and nod wisely.
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