Edinburgh
Festival 2000
"Channel 4 executives would kill to squeeze something with
this much life." The Argus, July 25, 2000
Productions
2008 - She Stoops To Conquer - Open Air St Ann's Well Gardens, Hove
2007
- Abigail's Party - Open Air St Ann's Well Gardens, Hove
2007
- Famous
Five @ the Brighton
Festival
2006
- Blithe Spirit - Open Air St Ann's Well Gardens, Hove & New Theatre
Royal, Portsmouth
2006
- Twelfth Night - Pavilion Theatre, Brighton
2005
- The
Importance Of Being Earnest - Open Air St Ann's Well Gardens,
Hove
2004
- Twelfth Night - Open Air St Ann's Well Gardens, Hove
2004
- Hotel Palmeira, written by James
Madden - Radio pilot - Touchwood Studio's, London
2003
- Brighton Soapbox by James Madden
- Monthly at Komedia, Brighton
2002
- Twelfth Night - together with Rachel Lasserson & Contraband Productions,
Open Air Queens Park, London
2001
- I Know
What You Want, by James Madden
& Nasty Boy, by James Madden
- Komedia @Southside, Edinburgh Fringe Festival & Tour
2000
- I Know
What You Want - Komedia @Southside,
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
1999
- The Snatching of Bookie Bob (screenplay),
written by James Madden
Starring Rod Steiger, premiered at Planet Hollywood
1999
- So Bloody Important, by James Madden
- Man In The Moon, Chelsea &"Off Broadway ", New York
1998
- Artist's Model, by James Madden - Bristol Old Vic and Komedia, Brighton
1998
- St. Christopher, written by James Madden
(screenplay)
1998 - Bagging up, by James
Madden - Canal Café Theatre, London
Forthcoming Productions
…THE
rapid fire pace of this blistering comedy is established as soon
as the lights go up on this story of three youngish people forced
by circumstances into sharing a flat. The opening where much of
the humour takes place off stage is truly inventive. Finally,
on to the stage arrives what must surely be one of the most hysterically
irritating characters ever invented….Sarah Mann gives a dazzling
performance in the frenzied, jabbering and very challenging role
of Penny, who is so obviously besotted with her silent, scary,
skinny friend Tony. Penny believes Tony to be a recovering alcoholic,
but he is a secret drinker and, when he drinks, Michael D'Cruze
is allowed to demonstrate what a fine actor he is, playing Tony
as a man who with liquor inside him becomes a charming, chatty,
debonair wit with a penchant for quoting Noel Coward and Dylan
Thomas. If Tony was not an alcoholic before hooking up with Penny,
that woman would be enough to drive anyone to drink, with her
incessant babbling and wild mood swings, which she shoots through
like greased lightning to great comic effect. When they finally
sleep together she is fulfilled and ecstatic, he trapped and devastated…
…But for all the outrageous humour, this play has a black
heart. This splendid tale is reminiscent of The Caretaker, but
with bags of laughs and no pauses to interrupt its relentless
pace.
Jim Madden has written an extraordinary script that allows his
cast to show off all of their theatrical skills to huge effect.
The wonderful writing loops about, losing its own thread deliberately,
like a Vodka-swigging coke-head on a big hit., which is exactly
what this Class A comedy deserves to be.
Diane
Dubois, THE SCOTSMAN, August 2000
