It really has been a while - about 2 years in fact - since I last posted something here.

here-here-here

Oh hello, Echo! Still here I see, filling in the cavernous space for me. 

Anyway,

way-way-way

Do you mind? I'm trying to talk, here, alright?

right-right-right

Thank you. Ahem. As I was saying, since the last update I have performed as Prospero in The Tempest on Brownsea Island and in All My Sons at Poole Lighthouse in November 2015, and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at the Shelley Theatre and Hanger Farm Arts Centre in September '16. They were both fun, although on the last night of the Shakespeare I managed to badly damage my Achilles tendon which was, on the whole, not my finest moment. Of course I soldiered on and it was only the owls of the New Forest who were witness to the colourful language coming from my car as I drove slowly home...

So, it has been the best part of a year since I actually performed anything - it feels strange, I must say, to reacquaint myself with the television and the sofa. Not going to lie, though, the more time passes, the harder it is to picture doing it again...we will see.

I have been busy designing stuff, though, doing programmes and posters for All My Sons, The Complete Works, Bent, The Last Five Years, A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Matter of Life and Death, and Constellations, as well as the poster for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (all for Arena); posters and programme for A Tale of Two Cities for Regent Rep; and posters for Bournemouth Little Theatre Club's productions of The Real Inspector Hound/Black Comedy, Temple, Di, Viv and Rose, The Bed Before Yesterday, and The Maintenance Man.

The design for The Complete Works was found (somehow!) by the drama dept of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the States, who were also performing the play, and they got in touch and asked to use my "Groucho Shakespeare" image that I had made - of course I said yes, and they did some really cool Pop Art inspired posters with it, which was so cool to see.

So, it's not that I haven't been doing anything - it's just that I'm really bad at updating this site. Sorry!

orry-orry-orry

​Oh, shut up.

I have now completed the design commission for Filumena by Don Minzone Productions, to be staged at the Drayton Arms Theatre in London. 

So, big news is, I have been cast to play Prospero in Brownsea Open-Air Theatre's production of The Tempest!

Very excited about this. Or possibly terrified. It should be a brilliant production with Neil Mathieson directing and some seriously amazing staging ideas.

Also, I have now uploaded the poster work I have done for both Brief Encounter (a teaser only at this stage) and All My Sons. I kinda like them.

It's been a while, so I thought I should update re: Macbeth. 

I couldn't have been happier with the outcome. We first went to faraway Warminster, where, despite no-one knowing who the hell we were, we drew a very healthy two-thirds audience; a feat repeated at The Mowlem in Swanage, where they reported the best advance bookings for a straight play in memory!

This was capped with a fantastic three night run at the Shelley Theatre in Bournemouth, whic was not only totally sold out, but had a waiting list for tickets for every night. Amazing feeling.

The cast did me proud, and the whole thing was well received and hopefully will be remembered. I know I will remember it for the rest of my life, as it has been a dream of mine to produce my Celtic inspired Macbeth for many years. Fantastic.

I know, it's been 2014 for a whole week already, but I think it's still in the safe zone of whishing people a happy new year without it being a bit too late and feeling a little awkward. So, happy new year!

I have now completed the posters for DNA and The River for Arena Theatre and also finalised the Macbeth poster with all the dates on it. All can be seen on the Theatre Posters page, along with some other bits I have done for Brock College and Regent Rep, too.

It's been a while, so I thought I would pop a quick update to all my readers (looks up...wind sound effect...tumbleweed).

Macbeth rehearsals are just about to enter their second phase, the first being a series of "chunks" of around 10 pages a rehearsal where we worked on the text and blocking quite closely, and which finished with the first fight choreography session (great fun!). The second phase is going to be running quarters, then on to halves and then ultimately full runs. Hopefully everyone will remember what they're meant to be doing!

I have also finalised the programme and poster artwork for The Weir and The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged) for Arena, and also done the programme for Regent Rep's An Inspector Calls and a poster for Brockenhurst College's production of Rent. 

Blimey, when I look back at the last couple of months I'm amazed how much I managed to fit in, especially when programme work for Regent Rep includes writing everything bar the biogs for the actors (and even then, half the time I do that for them too) - production notes, director's notes, the whole nine yards. Oh yes, I don't just put the supplied content together prettily you know! Arena always supply me director's notes, which helps, but then with a brand new rest-of-season announced for 2014, I have also had to mock up workable posters for DNA, The River and Collaborators to use in the forthcoming productions page. I can't even think about The History Boys yet! Yep, value for money, that's Rare Gravy. Er. if there was any money changing hands for this stuff, anyway. I did get free tickets for Regent Rep but was unable to go, and a discounted ticket for Arena seems rather small return for the several hours worth of work I do for each poster and programme set...perhaps I ought to start charging!

It took a while to choose the cast for Macbeth (Arena Theatre), but here is the cast list in all its glory:

MACBETH Paul Mole | LADY MACBETH Jo Owen | KING DUNCAN/SIWARD David Weeks | MALCOLM Rory Moncaster | DONALBAIN/YOUNG SIWARD Bogdan McHugh | BANQUO Sean Beaumont | FLEANCE Declan O'Donnell | MACDUFF Chris Vessey | LADY MACDUFF Louise Thomas  | SON MACDUFF Nathan Gash | DAUGHTER MACDUFF Alanis Gash | FIRST WITCH Jo Dunbar | SECOND WITCH Bethany Harris | THIRD WITCH Rachael Cheeseman | ROSS Scott Sullivan | ANGUS John Harrington | LENNOX James Curtis | SEYTON Tim Wallace-Abbot  | DOCTOR Polly Ashness | GENTLEWOMAN Isabel Maclaren | FIRST MURDERER (also Groom) Ignatius Harling | SECOND MURDERER (also Groom) Alan Freeman 

It is lovely to have had such a lot of interest in the play to be able to choose such a great crowd to work with - in my last post I joked about crowds of people - in the end for the female parts alone I had sixteen women apply!

The cast has a number of regulars but is also notable for a great number of people who are either brand new to Arena Theatre, or with whom I have worked myself only once or twice, and it's great to see an influx of new talent to the company.

Author: Gareth Richards

Next week is the readthrough for Macbeth, and I'm getting quite excited at the prospect of meeting everyone and (hopefully) enthusing them all with my ideas for the play.

The show will be playing in The Athaenium, Warminster (Saturday March 8th); The Mowlem, Swanage (Saturday March 15th); and The Hub, Southampton (Saturday March 22nd).

In addition, we will be performing for a run of three nights in early April at the historic Shelley Theatre in Bournemouth, which is hugely exciting news! Exact dates to be confirmed shortly - watch this space.

This is a really exciting-looking roundup of venues, as three of the four will be hosting Arena for the very first time (Swanage being an old mucker of the group, going way back). We hope to do ourselves proud and encourage repeat bookings at them all. So, no pressure there, then.

I hope people like the interpretation I have made of the script, and will be fighting to get into the cast. In my mind's eye I am picturing hordes of people jamming the doors, a queue round the block, and - of course - rioting and looting on the streets as actors clamber over one another to have the chance to get in the room and read. The truth will undoubtedly be more prosaic, a dozen or so nice sensible Bournemouthites sat politely in a circle with the major doorway-related excitement being the outside chance of a protracted bout of the no-after-you's, but a boy can dream, can't he?

Author: Gareth Richards

So, having done the artwork for the posters and flyers for Regent Rep's production of Baddies which will appear at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, I have been told that the manager of the Space venues intends to use my poster design as an example to other theatre companies of the right way to do it!
Nice to be appreciated :-)
Author: Gareth Richards

Just realised I never posted the reviews for Jekyll and Hyde. Whoops. So, here they are:
SceneOne
Bournemouth Echo
For those of you visiting in the future, by which time (depending how far into the future we're talking), these reviews will either have been archived or the world will be being run by giant irradiated mutant cockroaches and the internet will be a forgotten thing, a discarded child's toy sadly trampled into the dust of the endless prairie and witnessed only by an uncaring sun and the occasional foraging rodent...erm...where was I? Oh yes. If you can't access the link for whatever reason - up to and including oversensitivy of the eyes caused by a lifetime of manual labour in the underground catacombs of our insectoid overlords - the gist is: very good, Jekyll was great, Hyde was even better, the steampunk outfits flummoxed some people, and I was "always in control".
What's that you say? Oh, yeah. I suppose this whole North Korea situation must be in the back of my mind somewhere, why do you ask?
Author: Gareth Richards