Trelawny of the 'Wells'

Bohemia and Victorian respectability collide when the vivacious star of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Rose Trelawney, attempts to swap backstage life for the suffocating household of her formidable prospective father-in law, Sir William Gower Q.C. Any hopes they have of living harmoniously are dashed when the pompous judge discovers Rose’s old friends paying her a riotous midnight visit and the pair are soon locked in a hilarious battle to change the other.

Arthur Wing Pinero’s gloriously life affirming comedy perfectly captures the ups and downs, glamour and hardship of life in the Victorian Theatre and has at its centre two wonderfully comic characters whose celebrated clashes prelude Shaw’s Pygmalion – as well as modern theatre’s first “angry young man”, Tom Wrench, a thinly disguised portrait of Tom Robertson, the creator of naturalistic drama, who has written a new style of play about ordinary people which nobody wants to produce! Pinero based events on his own theatrical apprenticeship in the 1860’s with the Bancrofts (buried next door to the Finborough Theatre in Brompton Cemetery)

With its large cast and sweeping story, this passionate celebration of theatre’s magic is a suitably ambitious production with which to celebrate 25 years of the Finborough Theatre.