Suitcase Theatre Company brings Conrad’s classic story to the Melville Theatre
After the success in June of its first production – Lilies on the Land, a play about the Women’s Land Army – Abergavenny’s Suitcase Theatre Company has gone further back in time, to the turn of the last century, for its next production at the Melville Theatre, a dramatization by director William Gilbert of Joseph Conrad’s classic tale of a Victorian bomb plot, The Secret Agent. In the foggy back streets of London, a group of anarchists is plotting to blow up the heart of time itself – Greenwich Mean Time. Can Inspector Heat of Scotland Yard’s Special Crimes Section stop them before it’s too late?
The Secret Agent is a play with songs, and promises to deliver more of Suitcase Theatre Company’s trademark theatre style – simplicity coupled with inventiveness. “It’s a challenge to dramatize Conrad’s novel,” William admits, “but I hope I’ve been true to the spirit of the original whilst taking just a few liberties here and there to make it possible to stage it in a small theatre space like the Melville. I’ve also wrapped Conrad’s tale in a second story, the Christmas festivities of a typical late Victorian family, and that’s allowed me to follow some of the themes of the novel into a different kind of setting.”
The Secret Agent will be performed on Thu 27 – Sat 29 November at 7.30pm. Tickets (£8 and £5 for under 18s) are available from the Melville Theatre (Tel: 01873 853167). Further information from: wegilbert@outlook.com