NT Live Filming. London Assurance 28 June 2010

by Dion Boucicault

We are delighted to be able to include this performance of London Assurance in the first season of NTLive broadcasts.

This performance will be broadcast live with several cameras in the auditorium and views of the stage may be blocked at any time during the performance. Please note:

    * This is a studio performance.
    * The light and sound will be adjusted for broadcast.
    * There will be 360degree filming – resulting in audience members being filmed.
    * Everyone must be seated by 6.45pm. No latecomers will be admitted.

 Details of the cinema screenings will be announced on the NT Live website

Sir Harcourt Courtly is lured away from the epicentre of fashionable London by the promise of a rich and beautiful bride, Grace, several decades his junior. Arriving at Oak Hall, Gloucestershire, he marvels at this rural Venus until her charms are eclipsed by her hearty cousin, the foxhunting Lady Gay Spanker. Meanwhile his disguised son turns up in flight from his creditors and falls head over heels for Grace. When Lady Spanker discovers the young couple, she needs little prompting from the visiting chancer Dazzle to lead Sir Harcourt astray.

I am about to present society with a second Lady Courtly: young – blushing eighteen; lovely – I have her portrait; rich – I have her banker’s account. An heiress and a Venus!

Dion Boucicault, the Irish genius of London theatre in the age of Dickens, wrote the brilliantly funny London Assurance in 1841 and thereby created – in Sir Harcourt and Lady Spanker – two of the great comic roles of the English stage, played at the NT by Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw.

Give me the trumpet neigh, the spotted pack just catching scent. What a chorus in their yelp! The view-halloo, blent with a peal of free and fearless mirth! That’s our old English music – match it where you can.

Assisted Performances

This event is a Captioned performance.

• Read an interview with Richard Briers in The Times
• Listen again to Richard Briers on Radio 4's Front Row
• Read an interview with Simon Russell Beale in the Guardian
• Read an interview with Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw in the Daily Telegraph

 

NT Live Filming. London Assurance 28 June 2010 finished on: 28 June 2010