NEWCASTLE Theatre Company's just-announced 2022 program includes a wide range of shows that audiences will find to be very engaging, including the premieres of two plays by Hunter writers Carl Caulfield and Scott Bevan.
Caulfield's show, The Fine Art of Deception, which will be presented between May 7 and 21, is being promoted as "a comedy thriller about money, art and friendship".
The play, which is set in London, has a glamorous former model who partied in the 1970s with singer Mick Jagger and then established an art gallery with her now deceased husband, having problems when people make visits to her home that lead to unexpected things happening: a handyman who comes to do a simple repair job; an old female friend who comes without notice and refuses to leave; her business partner who turns up with unexpected documents; and a stranger.
Scott Bevan's play, The Rest is Silence (October 8 - 22), centres on a man, Dan Bedford, who wants to be an actor but only is employed to put together and deliver eulogies at funerals, with one terminally ill man determined to have some control on what is said about his past. And gradually that past is revealed.
The year begins with a play, 84 Charing Cross Road, that was one of the company's 2021 Independent Season plays, but had to be postponed because of the coronavirus. The show, written by Helene Hanff, a New York TV script reader, and based on her relationship which will be presented between January 19 and 22, is based on Hanff's relationship with an English writer.
The other plays are:
Wyrd Sisters (February 12 - 26), adapted by Stephen Briggs from Terry Pratchett's comic book that is set on a flat planet balanced at the backs of ever-changing animals, with the occupants trying to make characters by Shakespeare, Dickens, the Marx Bros, and others, come alive.
Neil Simon's comedy Barefoot in the Park (March 26 - April 9), which looks at the relationships of a newly-wed New York couple and people they encounter as they move around New York's Central Park and other venues. It is another work that was initially programmed for this year.
The Les Darcy Show (June 18 - July 2), a play that looks at the life of the Maitland-raised boxer, a member of a poor Irish family who migrated to Australia in the 1890s, with his boxing success as a teenager and young adult leading him to be renowned worldwide, and dying from pneumonia at age 21 after while defeating many United States boxers while touring their country.
Tons of Money (August 13 - 27), an English farce adapted by Alan Ayckbourn from a novel by Will Evans and Arthur Valentine that has an inept English inventor, who stands to inherit a large amount of money, taking steps to prevent other family members from inheriting the money so that his wife can collect it if her dies early.
The Watsons (November 12 - December 3), an amusing story by Kathryn Attwood, adapted from Jane Austen's novel that was unfinished at her death, that looks, with a full ending, at a young woman trying to ensure that she marries a man who will be able to make sure that her increasingly poor family doesn't get into an unpayable debt.
