5th July 2024
Thame Players’ next production is a classic black comedy based on a famous Ealing Studios film of 1955, The Ladykillers. In the plot, Professor Marcus and his gang of robbers, posing as amateur musicians, rent rooms from a sweet and eccentric old widow, Mrs Wilberforce, while they plan their next heist. Mrs Wilberforce lives alone with her raucous parrot in a gradually subsiding and lopsided house, built over the entrance to a railway tunnel at Kings Cross, London.
The villains plot to involve her, unwittingly, in their crime, putting her life in danger, but she is more than a match for them. The police are stumped but Mrs Wilberforce becomes wise to their ruse and Marcus concludes there is only one way to keep the old lady quiet! With only her parrot, General Gordon, to help her, Mrs Wilberforce is alone with five desperate men. But who will be forced to face the music?
The Ladykillers, amongst the best of its genre, was famed as a crime film directed in1955 by Alexander Mackendrick for the famous Ealing Studios. It starred, among others, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Stratford Johns, Kenneth Connor, and also featured a cameo role for Frankie Howerd.
Thame Players’ production, directed by Sue Deaney and Colleen Tudway, is based on a stage adaption by Graham Linehan, an Irish comedy writer who created or co-created the sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd as well as contributing to shows such as Brass Eye and The Fast Show. The Ladykillers premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in 2011. It later moved to the Gielgud Theatre in London and starred Peter Capaldi, receiving rave reviews. The play was taken on a national tour between September and December 2012. In March 2017 it was performed at the Questors Theatre, Ealing, located less than 500 metres from Ealing Studios, where the original 1955 film was shot.
The Ladykillers will be performed at the Players Theatre in Thame from Tuesday 9th to Saturday 13th July inclusive. This is black comedy at its best – get your tickets now!
