Following on from a critically acclaimed run at the Playhouse Theatre in Cheltenham, Jarek Adams’ play The Mysterious Gentleman, exploring the eternal question of what lies beyond death, told through the life story of mercurial magician JN Maskelyne and incorporating stage magic, comes to the Courtyard Theatre, opening on Halloween 2017.
JN Maskelyne was known as the father of modern magic in the Victorian era, building his career on challenging fraudulent spiritualists and charlatans as well as creating magical illusions that amazed Victorian audiences, and still astonish people today. A man of contradictions, the play explores his human desire to break through to those in the afterlife whilst clinging to his scientific belief that it was not possible. He also insisted that all he did onstage was clever illusion, whilst encouraging people to believe the myth about his powers being granted by a mysterious gentleman.
But why did he explore dark magic? Were his powers supernatural? And who was the mysterious gentleman in black? He died in 1917, and will return to the stage in 2017.
Partners in Mischief Productions is a creative partnership between writer Jarek Adams & actor Andrew Thorn. They build teams with specialized skills to produce the plays they want to create. Partners in Mischief Productions, for The Mysterious Gentlemen, are collaborating with Kasia Rozycki of Off The Cliff Theatre.
Jarek Adams has produced a long list of educational plays that have toured nationally and internationally. She has received funding from the Arts Council for a number of projects, including ‘The Mysterious Gentleman’, ‘The Secret Life of Dads’ and the ‘Scriptorium’ playwrights development project. Her first two novels both hit the Amazon (paid for) best seller charts on their release, and she is currently working on a sequel to Brighton Sucks, which will be the second of her Brighton trilogy.
