Picture: Marc Brenner
After 32 months off for good behaviour (and Covid), musical theatre goes back to jail next month with Pimlico Opera’s production of Betty Blue Eyes at HMP Bronzefield at Ashford, Surrey.
The musical comedy, based on Alan Bennett’s screenplay for the 1984 film A Private Function, has a score by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe and runs for five performances on 6, 8, 10, 12 and 13 November 2022.
Theatre professionals are working side by side with “residents” under the direction of Sasha Regan for five performances at Europe’s largest female prison.
This will be Pimlico’s fifth musical at Bronzefield after Chicago, Sister Act, Sweet Charity and Hairspray and their 25th in all since Sweeney Todd started the ball rolling at Wormwood Scrubs in 1991.
Freddie King (the moody Jason ‘JD’ Dean in Heathers The Musical at The Other Palace last year) plays Gilbert Chilvers and Performance Preparation Academy graduate Charlotte Fleming repeats the role of Joyce Chilvers she played at the Guildford college last November.
Also in the cast: Tom Duern, Bibi Jay, Michael Burgen, another PPA graduate Beth Atkin (making her pro debut)… and a pig called Betty!
Other parts are performed by the inmates, some of whom have never been in a theatre in their lives. Prisoners work full-time for several weeks with professional actors, musicians and creatives to create the finished product. The show is a substitute for the original choice, the dark comedy Little Shop of Horrors.
More than 60,000 members of the public have supported the Pimlico musicals over the years in prisons in the UK and Ireland. The enterprise which costs over £200,000 has no public subsidy and is funded by donations and ticket sales.
Director Regan wrote on Twitter: “Working in prison with women who have led unimaginable lives… now they sing and I know the true power of music. It’s the ability to forget, to lose oneself. It’s magic.”
Once seen, never forgotten, Pimlico Opera productions show how theatre can be a force for good in prisoners’ rehabilitation and some of the 1,000-plus inmates who have taken part are given employment by Pimlico on their release or placed elsewhere. Details on the Pimlico Opera website (Box Office 01962 737373).
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.