AUDITION NOTICE FOR 'The Safari Party’

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Show Dates: November 20th to 23rd November 2024

Read through date: Tuesday 18th June 7.30

Audition date: Tuesday 25th June 7.30

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The play

Three households in rural Cheshire decide for different reasons to take part in a ‘safari party’, these ventures, sometimes called ‘Progressive Dinners’ started in the US Midwest in about 1880, where diners move to a different house for each course of a meal, sometimes having to solve a puzzle to find out where to go next!  Fortunately Tim Firth’s version is simpler than that. 

The first act (starters) is in brothers Daniel and Adam’s farm kitchen, which has been stripped of anything saleable because they are struggling financially.

The second act (mains) is set in the posh barn conversion belonging to the Voyseys, Lol (Laurence), and his wife Esther, they are successful retailers trying to adopt a genteel country lifestyle, totally at odds with the real countryside all around them, and the gaps are beginning to show. Their daughter Bridget comes with them, basically to see what happens.

The third act (afters) is set in the outhouse (was a pigsty) where Inga keeps her stock of old furniture.  Inga appears to be a refined English antique dealer, but is she?

…. and there’s that table, which has changed hands (and price, and ‘provenance’) twice recently…

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The writer

Tim Firth has an excellent track record; he wrote the stage play ‘Calendar Girls’ and the screenplay for the film AND the musical version currently on tour.  He wrote the screenplay for the films ‘Kinky Boots’ and ‘Our House’ the Madness musical, plus some cracking stage plays, of which this is one.

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The directors

Steve Atkins and Krysia Blake.  Steve has been around amdram for ever and has directed everything from Hedda Gabler to Guys and Dolls via farce and panto, and is very pleased to be working again by Krysia, who has been a great collaborator on various ventures including ‘Masquerade’ by Pratchett and Briggs at Henley, and ‘Dial M for Murder’ and ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ at Woodley, and is, of course a fine director in her own right..

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The characters

Daniel is in his 20’s, the more stoic and grounded of the two brothers, he tends to think of  practicalities, the here and now. with a tendency to get overwhelmed and panic

His brother Adam, also in his twenties, is the one with the ideas (though not necessarily knowing how to follow through), more social, and more imaginative.  Both brothers are struggling after the recent death of their abusive father.

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Lol Voysey is in his fifties, a bit overweight, with a tendency to take over the conversation, his avuncular manner sharpened by years selling things to people who didn’t really want them, at heart a bit vulgar with a veneer of sophistication.

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Bridget, in her twenties, his daughter, outspoken, fed up with the affected attitudes and pretensions of her parents, and savvy enough to know exactly how to deal with them.

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Esther, Lol’s wife, also a bit overweight and trying to dress to counteract it.  Also a bit vulgar (well she has lived with Lol a long time) with a bit more empathy but no real understanding of country life.  She and Lol bicker and row a lot, you can tell that’s what keeps the relationship going.

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Inga, early sixties, an antique dealer who give every appearance of gentility and being an ‘English Gentlewoman’, whereas the truth is anything but. She’s as capable of manipulating her own background as those of the ‘Antiques’ she sells.

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All ages are flexible.  Your directors have both taken parts in this play, and we can tell you from first-hand experience it is very funny, and the comedy comes from the well-drawn characters and their interplay.  It also resolves well and the ending is complete and harmonious.

Steve and Krysia

If you’re interested but can’t make the audition please let us know.

0118 9691134

07788 695840

atkins72@gmail.com