DREAMS FROM A SUMMER HOUSE
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| © Scarborough Theatre Trust |
A musical play
Words by Alan Ayckbourn; Music by John Pattison
Synopsis
A clever, highly original musical which provides challenging roles for eight actors/ singers and combines the ingenious comic expertise of Alan Ayckbourn with John Pattison's fully integrated score (published separately) that ranges from the operatic to pop.
Grayson and his formidable wife, Chrissie, are hosting a garden party at their Leatherhead home. Robert, an artist formerly married to their eldest daughter Amanda, has borrowed the garden summer house to work on illustrations of Beauty and the Beast for a children's book, but Robert is not so much painting as drinking and berating womankind in general, and Amanda in particular. So, it's an uphill struggle for Amanda's young sister, Mel, who nurtures an unrequited love for Robert. As the summer evening progresses and Robert becomes ever more cynical, the subject of his painting, Belle, suddenly materialises before him, closely followed by an irate Amanda, her cowering husband Sinclair and Baldemar, a beast, come in search of Belle ...
- "It is almost impossible not to be seduced by this fanciful flight
of the imagination. The story develops a cliff-hanging drama of its
own (like a good fairy-tale, in fact) and, despite the many excellent
jokes, the musical becomes an unashamedly sentimental celebra-tion of
romantic music ... John Pattison's score is often gorgeously lush, and
the love duet between Robert and Belle has a quality of tender yearning
to rival anything in The Phantom of the Opera ... The warm good humour
of Dreams from a Summer House is especially welcome. Enchanting, ingenious
and often uproariously funny..." Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph
- "Funny, beguiling, melancholy: Sondheim with a smile." John Peter, Sunday Times
Cast: M4 F4
Setting: a garden summer house
Perusal material available
Libretto ISBN 0 573 08104 2 | Vocal score ISBN 0 573 08599 4