Lark Theater

One Man, Two Guvnors

by Richard Bean
based on The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni with songs by Grant Olding.

Fired from his skiffle band, Francis Henshall becomes minder to Roscoe Crabbe, a small time East End hood, now in Brighton to collect £6,000 from his fiancee’s dad. But Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her own dead brother, who’s been killed by her boyfriend Stanley Stubbers. Holed up at The Cricketers’ Arms, the permanently ravenous Francis spots the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with one Stanley Stubbers, who is hiding from the police and waiting to be re-united with Rachel. To prevent discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart. Simple.

‘A triumph of visual and verbal comedy. One of the funniest productions in the National’s history.’
--Guardian

‘The single funniest production I've ever seen.'
--Mark Lawson, BBC Radio 4

The Kitchen

by Arnold Wesker

Arnold Wesker's extraordinary play premiered at the Royal Court in 1959 and has since been performed in over 30 countries.

1950s London. In the kitchen of an enormous West End restaurant, the orders are piling up: a post-war feast of soup, fish, cutlets, omelettes and fruit flans. ‘Fifteen hundred customers an' half of them eating fish. I had to start work on a Friday.’

Thrown together by their work, chefs, waitresses and porters from across Europe -- English, Irish, German, Jewish -- argue and flirt as they race to keep up. Peter, a high-spirited young cook, seems to thrive on the pressure. In between preparing dishes, he manages to strike up an affair with married waitress Monique, the whole time dreaming of a better life. But in the all-consuming clamour of the kitchen, nothing is far from the brink of collapse.

The workplace is centre stage in a funny and furious examination of life lived at breakneck speed, when work threatens to define who we are. It features an ensemble of 30 people and is set in a kitchen, using real food and with actors actually cooking and preparing food on stage -- it is a tour de force spectacle. Directed by Bijan Sheibani.

Collaborators

A new play by John Hodge (screenwriter of Trainspotting, Shallow Grave) directed by National Theatre Artistic Director Nicholas Hytner.

The play centers on an imaginary encounter between Joseph Stalin and the playwright Mikhail Bulgakov (best known for his novel The Master and Margarita); Alex Jennings (The Habit of Art) will play Bulgakov and Simon Russell Beale (London Assurance) will play Stalin.

Travelling Light

A new play by Nicholas Wright, directed by National Theatre Artistic Director Nicholas Hytner.

In a remote village in Eastern Europe, around 1900, the young Motl Mendl is entranced by the flickering silent images on his father’s cinematograph. Bankrolled by Jacob, the ebullient local timber merchant, and inspired by Anna, the girl sent to help him make moving pictures of their village, he stumbles on a revolutionary way of story-telling. Forty years on, Motl – now a famed American film director – looks back on his early life and confronts the cost of fulfilling his dreams.

How had a twenty–two–year–old pretentious layabout made a discovery that would elude everyother cinematic pioneer for years to come?

A funny and fascinating tribute to the Eastern European Jewish immigrants who became major players in Hollywood’s golden age.

The Comedy of Errors

by William Shakespeare

The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays and one his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humor coming from mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. It tells the story of two sets of identical twins that were accidentally separated at birth. When they encounter the friends and families of their twins, a series of wild mishaps based on mistaken identities lead to wrongful beatings, a near-seduction, arrests and accusations of infidelity, theft, madness and demonic possession.

She Stoops to Conquer

by Oliver Goldsmith

Hardcastle, a man of substance, looks forward to acquainting his daughter with his old pal’s son with a view to marriage. But thanks to playboy Lumpkin, he’s mistaken by his prospective son-in-law Marlow for an innkeeper, his daughter for the local barmaid. The good news is, while Marlow can barely speak to a woman of quality he’s a charmer with those of a different stamp. And so, as Hardcastle’s indignation intensifies, Miss Hardcastle’s appreciation for her misguided suitor soars. Misdemeanours multiply, love blossoms, mayhem ensues.

One of the great, generous-hearted and ingenious comedies of the English language, Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer offers a celebration of chaos, courtship and the dysfunctional family.