The Man with Two Gaffers

Starring: Barrie Rutter

Showing Thursday 30 November to Saturday 02 December 2006
Transport | Access

Performance Times: Thursday at 8pm, Friday and Saturday at 7.30pm, Saturday Matinee at 2.30pm

call our box office on 01253 290190

Group bookings call 01253 743232

NORTHERN BROADSIDES

A new adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters
(Carlo Goldoni,1707-1793)
by BLAKE MORRISON (2006)

The Northern Broadsides ensemble, starring Barrie Rutter
Directed by Barrie Rutter
Designed by Leslie Travers

The Grand Theatre proudly welcomes Northern Broadsides in their sixth play at this theatre in twelve months! The critical response to Richard III, Henry VI and Edward IV was unprecedentedly enthusiastic.

A servant with two gaffers... A woman disguised as her brother... A pig-headed farmer, a pompous vicar, a lovesick lad, a lass reluctantly engaged to a man who's meant to be dead...

Gaffs and gaffers abound in another glorious Broadsides' comedy

Treat yourself to an evening of hilarity with Blake Morrison's brilliant adaptation of Goldoni's classic Italian comedy, The Servant of Two Masters. Set in a small Yorkshire town in the mid-nineteeth century, this unashamedly Northern production swaps Venetian waterways for the Leeds-Liverpool Canal!

The Man with Two Gaffers is an uproarious tale of mistaken identity, deception, love and longing. A broke and hungry Yorkshireman suddenly lands himself two jobs. Great! But can a man really serve two bosses at once and not be rumbled? And imagine the confusion when he discovers they are actually in love with each other!

Set in 1850s Skipton, Dodge is a deviously greedy soul who - in order to swell his purse and his stomach - attempts to serve two gaffers at the same time. The first is Francis who is on the run following the apparent murder of his lover's brother, Frederick. The other is Beatrice, disguised as her dead brother Frederick, in search of her lover.

Confused?

You will be, as gleeful scenes of madness and mayhem result from Dodge's increasingly desperate actions to keep them apart.

Barrie Rutter, star of The School for Scandal, and frequent Variety artiste at the Grand Theatre, plays the loveable rogue 'Dodge' - with all the gusto and sheer comic genius for which he is renowned.

Please note that we especially welcome theatregoers from Cumbria: this production is not touring to Windermere!

Dramatist Blake Morrison

Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, in 1950. He was educated at the University of Nottingham and University College, London. He worked for the Times Literary Supplement between 1978 and 1981 and was then literary editor for both The Observer and the Independent on Sunday. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a former Chairman of the Poetry Book Society and council member of the Poetry Society, a member of the Literature Panel of the Arts Council of England and Vice-Chairman of English PEN.

His non-fiction books include And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), an honest and moving account of his father's life and death that won the J. R. Ackerley Prize and the Esquire/Volvo/Waterstone's Non-Fiction Book Award; As If (1997), about the trial of the two young boys convicted of killing the toddler James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993; and Too True (1998), a collection of essays (and stories). His poetry includes the collections Dark Glasses (1984), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, and The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper (and Other Poems) (1987). A selection of his poems, Pendle Witches, was published in a special edition in 1996, illustrated by the artist Paula Rego.

Blake Morrison's first novel, The Justification of Johann Gutenberg, a fictional portrait of the fithteenth-century printer and the inventor of movable type, was published in 2000.

His critical work includes The Movement: English Poetry and Fiction of the 1950s (1980) and Seamus Heaney (1982). He is editor (with Andrew Motion) of The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry (1982) and wrote a book for children, The Yellow House (1987), illustrated by Helen Craig. His play, The Cracked Pot (1996), is an adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's Der Zerbrochene Krug. Both this and his version of Sophocles's Oedipus (2001) were produced and performed by Northern Broadsides. They went on to perform his version of Antigone in 2003 and published Antigone and Oedipus (2003) in a double volume the same year. He is the author of the screenplay for The Bicycle Thieves, a short film for Channel 4 Television. He also wrote the libretto for the opera Dr Ox's Experiment with music by Gavin Bryars, with whom he collaborated on a second opera, 5.

His book, Things My Mother Never Told Me, a memoir of his mother, was published in 2002.

LEARNING
The Man with Two Gaffers education pack is also avaible for download - see PDF downloads on this page.

Presented By: Northern Broadsides Theatre Company Limited in partnership with York Theatre Royal, by arrangement with the Grand Theatre

Booking information

Tickets:
Dress Circle £14.50 - Concessions £12.50
Stalls £14.50 - Concessions £12.50
Upper Circle £12.50 - Concessions £10.50
Side Upper Circle £10.50 - Concessions £8.50

Friends of the Grand: - Thursday £6.00

School and Colleges: £5.00 any performance.

The Man with Two Gaffers education pack is also avaible for download - see PDF downloads on this page.

Groups 12:+ £3.00 off all performances

BOX OFFICE
Open 10am to 8pm Monday to Saturday and from 12noon on performance Sundays. All major credit and debit cards are accepted over the telephone and in person. When booking by credit card, a booking fee of £1.50 per transaction is applicable. Debit cards attract no booking fee.

POSTAL ADDRESS
Grand Theatre, 33 Church Street, Blackpool, FY1 1HT. Cheques should be made payable to Blackpool Grand Theatre and remember to add 60p to your total, if you would like your tickets posted back to you.

CONCESSIONS
Concessions, where offered, apply to: Senior Citizens, Registered Disabled, Under 18s, Full-time students, Registered Unemployed, Equity, BECTU and MU members. Please note you may be asked for relevant identification when requesting concessions. Only one concession per ticket is allowed and may not be used in conjunction with
any other offers. Concessions and offers are subject to availability and allocated at the discretion of the Box Office.

PARKING
Parking at the Grand couldn’t be easier… or cheaper! Directly opposite the theatre’s entrance is the secure West Street Car Park where parking is available at a discounted rate. Book your parking ticket when you book your show tickets from the Box Office and you can have parking from 5.30pm until 11.30pm for only £3.00! Parking is also free at this car park on Thursday evenings. We are obliged to Blackpool Council for providing this parking facility.