November 2017 - Betty Blue Eyes

If you enjoy Silas Marner why not join us for our next musical production in November 2017 ? BODS is considering Betty Blue Eyes, and as the cast is quite large it would be great to find out as early as possible how many people are interested.

Julie Bickerdike writes:

We are hoping to stage the fantastic and relatively new British musical Betty Blue Eyes - a musical comedy adaption of Alan Bennett’s story A Private Function - for performance 8-11th November 2017

There are many great parts available for old, middle aged and young, men and women (as well as a pig!) and you don’t have to dance!

If you are interested in performing, helping back stage, front of stage, or just coming to see it, please contact us and we will add you to our supporters list and be in touch with details early next year.

We hope to conjure up the atmosphere of post war austerity and celebrate what we hope will be Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth II 70th wedding anniversary with a musical based in November 1947 as they married. Here’s a little synopsis/background of the plot and musical:

'Belts are being tightened and the country’s long-suffering citizens are being told by the government that there will be fair shares for all in return for surviving Austerity Britain. Meanwhile local officials feather their own nests by taking far more than their own fair share. It is of course 1947, and having won the war Britain seems to have lost the peace, and the country is staggering under the burden of acute rationing, unemployment and the coldest winter for decades. The only bright spark on the horizon is the impending marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

Twenty six years ago Alan Bennett and Malcolm Mowbray wove this story into a hilariously funny but sharply observed comic film called A Private Function, which centered around Betty, an adorable pig, who is being illegally reared to ensure the local dignitaries can celebrate the Royal Wedding with a lavish banquet while the local population make do with Spam. Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman have brilliantly adapted and expanded this story for the stage and George Stiles and Anthony Drewe have written a deliciously infectious, toe-tapping, retro contemporary score. The result is an utterly British musical, full of eccentric characters, such as the strange odd couple, Gilbert – an evangelistic chiropodist, and Joyce – a nobody determined to be somebody; Inspector Wormold - an obsessive destroyer of illegal meat; Mother Dear – ‘She’s seventy four and ravenous’; along with a weird assortment of bullies, spivs and snobs and of course, the star, Betty the pig.