FINDING THE WILL
Patrons: Bernard Cribbins OBE, Sue Pritchard, Lord Blair of Boughton & The Lady Blair
BARD HEADS
REVIEWS
“BARD HEADS is a hugely enjoyable piece of theatre. It
is beautifully written, brilliantly acted and was breathtakingly
innovative. This is a must-see, whether a Shakespeare fan or
not”
Chris Jaeger, Director, Swan Theatre, Worcester June 2010
“BARD HEADS went down a storm at this year’s Corsham
Fringe Festival, and is the kind of show which will work perfectly
in a village venue”
The Pound Arts Team, Corsham, Wiltshire June 2010
“ Following a terrific performance in last year’s festival, FINDING
THE WILL is back with two new monologues based on Hamlet
and Macbeth”
Michael Cainen, The Pound Arts Centre, Corsham, Wiltshire
May 2011
FINDING THE WILL
Patrons: Bernard Cribbins OBE, Sue Pritchard, Lord Blair of Boughton & The Lady Blair
Witty duo take on the Bard
Bard Heads
Brinkworth Village Hall
Rural Arts Wiltshire
Malvolio’s been on an anger management course and Meg, The Third
Witch From The Left, is having therapy sessions – but it’s far from doom
and gloom in this witty take on two of Shakespeare’s characters.
This is The Bard in a refreshingly new light brought to life by Richard
Curnow and Jules Hobbs.
Bard Heads is an electrifying one-to-one between each character and the
audience and is packed to the brim with humour, darkness and pathos.
Colourful Malvolio, victim of the yellow stockings’ jest doesn’t like jokes.
And three months on it still rankles as he paces a tower overlooking the
shores of Illyria. Richard Curnow delves deep under Malvolio’s skin
skillfully bringing light and shade to his powerful, physical, performance
revealing Malvolio as a tragic character.
Jules Hobbs brings her own magic to Meg who is attending therapy
sessions, telling her story to the audience. In an engaging, witty and
extraordinarily poignant performance, it transpires Meg was a 16 year old
trainee witch sent to a lonely Scottish heath on work experience and
witnessed Macbeth’s downfall.
These cracking stories have all the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster
packed into two 50 minute solo pieces of superb performance.
Gina Hobbs
Wiltshire Gazette and Herald
8 April 2011
FINDING THE WILL
Patrons: Bernard Cribbins OBE, Sue Pritchard, Lord Blair of Boughton & The Lady Blair
HEALTH WARNING – ROBINS
Do not encourage this bird to your bird table
RAW’s production, Finding the Will, gave a timely seasonal warning about the dangers of watching
robins in your garden – in this case, Robin Goodfellow, Shakespeare’s Puck – who is up to no good at all
in the household of Hermia, twenty years after her marriage to her true love Lysander, after the
emotional mishaps of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Puck had used the juice of the purple flower to sort out the love tangle in the forest – but did it
work? Demetrius is sending purple flowers to his wife – but she hates purple! Does he love her? Does
she love him? Is Hermia getting a thrill from the possible re-kindling of Demetrius’ infatuation with her
before the forest adventure? What will be the possible effect on Hermia’s father, who is now seeing
fairies in the garden?
This was a funny and multi-layered investigation of the echoes of romantic love at that dangerous stage
when infatuation has given way to habit. The resolutely commonsensical Hermia eventually resists the
robin, but her friends count the cost.
By contrast, Osric (‘Call me Oz’) is imprisoned in his own silence – which manifests itself (a la Freud) in
acute constipation. He is a man who has been silenced by his own family, and whose experience of the
bloody events at the end of Hamlet has been up-staged and denied by Horatio’s ‘official’ account of the
death of ‘the people’s prince’. The satire on contemporary news media is both very funny and very
relevant. He comes out – on various media – to finally tell the truth that, ‘To thine own self be true/And
it must follow, as the night the day/Thou cans’t not then be false to any man’. This is very moving in
terms of how the character is realising himself and coming to terms with his own experience.
Finding the Will have taken a couple of Shakespeare’s two-dimensional characters, and realised them in
contemporary 3-D. Both of them mine the texts for thoughtful, funny, and in the end deeply touching
reflections on what it is to be human, and no longer young – and how that isn’t the end of the
story. You don’t need to be up to speed with your Shakespeare to thoroughly enjoy a couple of bravura
performances, but it may enhance your enjoyment. A cracking evening’s entertainment.
Jane Cragg-Barber
RAW performance, Hullavington Village Hall 25 February 2012
FINDING THE WILL
Patrons: Bernard Cribbins OBE, Sue Pritchard, Lord Blair of Boughton & The Lady Blair
Some Audience comments
“Beautifully performed and chillingly convincing” (Cheltenham Everyman
Studio)
“All strength to your arms, especially in lifting the blight on Shakespeare
and letting him free to be appreciated.” (Cheltenham Everyman Studio)
"Not only did we stay awake despite 9 hours of jet-lag, but we were riveted
by the performances, glued to every word and nuance" (Cheltenham
Everyman Studio)
“A fantastic evening – the best one of these events I’ve been to”
(Cholderton Village Hall)
“I didn’t really know what to expect – but I didn’t expect that! I loved it!
Thank you for a wonderfully entertaining evening” (Morgans Vale and
Woodfalls Village Hall)
“I didn’t know anything about Twelfth Night – now I’m going to go home and
read it!” (Morgans Vale and Woodfalls Village Hall)
“I’m not afraid to say I had a tear in my eye at the end” (Brinkworth Village
Hall)
FINDING THE WILL performed BARD HEADS as part of the
Rural Arts Wiltshire and Rural Arts South Gloucestershire Spring season in
Cholderton, Morgans Vale & Woodfalls, Brinkworth, Rowde and
Hullavington Village Halls during Spring 2011 and 2012; at the Phoenix
Theatre, Ross-on-Wye in May and September 2011, Corsham Fringe
Festival and Worcester Literary Festival in June 2011, The Lion Ballroom,
Leominster in March 2012 and Cheltenham Everyman Studio in July 2012.
FINDING THE WILL will be touring Cumbria, Co Durham and
Northumbria as part of the Highlights Rural Touring Autumn season and
joining the Arts Alive Rural Touring scheme in 2013.
FINDING THE WILL
Patrons: Bernard Cribbins OBE, Sue Pritchard, Lord Blair of Boughton & The Lady Blair
The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald
ARCHIVE - THURSDAY, 23 JUNE 2011
Seeing Shakespeare inside out
By Jo Bayne
Jules Hobbs and Richard Curnow have developed a highly entertaining way of exploring
Shakespeare’s plays, from the inside, through the eyes and ears of minor characters.
They are irreverent, quirky, enlightening and hugely entertaining.
Mr Curnow in modern dress is Osric, a 17-year-old courtier in the court of King Claudius
at the time of the Elsinore massacre 35 years earlier, in which Prince Hamlet and
numerous other members of the Danish nobility died.
Osric – call me Oz – is in therapy, tormented by a guilty secret from that time which he
cannot bring himself to reveal. That is until first the local paper, then radio and finally
national television latch on to him after he rubbishes a biography of Hamlet – The
People’s Prince – by Hamlet’s friend Horatio. A clever chat show host finally goads his
secret from him.
The obvious parallel is someone besmirching the fairy princess image of Diana Princess
of Wales.
Ms Hobbs is an endearing Meg, third witch from the left in the Macbeth tragedy. She is
also in the present day and in group therapy, but is over 400 years old and cannot die
until she has made amends for her part in the Scottish murders.
Courtesy of Tardis Travel recommended by Which (Witch) magazine – come on keep
up – Meg, born in Avebury, travels back to 1606 to find out what has become of the
some of the victims of the Macbeth’s evil plotting. At the time Meg was a 16 workexperience witch and not really responsible for the ambiguous prophecies of her tutors
on the blasted heath. But as a properly brought up young witch she feels she should
have said or done something as she was aware what they were doing was wrong.
Both pieces are cleverly constructed, and have lots of tasty, topical one-liners. They
could change forever the way you look at Shakespeare.
If you get a chance to see a local performance by FINDING THE WILL, don’t miss it.