Hot on the heels of last-year’s hit debut play, ‘An Absolute Farce of a Murder Mystery’, Canonbie Productions presents ‘Don’t Take The Pith!’
Two beloved returning characters… A colonial outpost… A missing talisman…A tentative peace with the local tribe & lots of stuff that isn’t all worthy and important…
Set in the year Nineteen Hundred & Somerset Maugham, noted psychic Lady Susan Bloom and self-proclaimed ‘wit, rake and raconteur’ Lord Sebastian Hardcastle are summoned by The Crown to the colonial island of Not-Borneo. (It’s not a million miles away from Borneo, but it’s somewhere you definitely haven’t been and so you’re entirely unqualified to criticise our depiction of non-Western
European civilisations).
The talisman of the local tribe has gone missing – and the list of suspects is made up of a bunch of hilarious and excellently-defined characters… is it Lord Peter de Meur, head of the British Outpost?
Or his wife, Lady Fleur de Meur? Could it be an inside- job, orchestrated by powerful and drop-dead-gorgeous Headswoman of the local tribe – Adiratna? Or her suspicious First Minister, her “No. 1” – Kanaka? Or the equally exotic Doctor Frenchman (pronounced Fronkmain), a guest on the island, with hidden motives? Or in true unexpected-Christie-style, the unassuming servant, Maud Pauper? Or – are things not quite what they seem? (Yeah, probably that)
The cast comprises: Helen Bang, Rosalind Blessed, David Furlong, Laura Morgan, Peter Rae, Richard Rycroft and Billie Vee.
Don’t Take The Pith! by Peter Rae and Directed by Helen Bang is at Drayton Arms Theatre May 21 – June 1 2024.
