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Medea

Medea is Splendid Productions' new creative adaptation of the Ancient Greek play by Euripides.

As the audience take their seats, they notice they are joining three mysterious elderly women - our chorus of Grandmothers. The Grans want to tell a story. But which one to choose?

The tragedy of Medea, the fiery, formidable sorceress whose legendary rage leads her to take the ultimate revenge on her cheating husband; killing their children? Or perhaps the mythic adventures of a classical hero, Jason, who set out on a glorious quest to win the magical Golden Fleece, and in the process won the adoring heart of the young princess Medea...? Why not just tell them both?

Splendid's 'Medea' explores the nature of love, legend, betrayal and revenge, weaving together the stories of the beginning and the end of a relationship, and questions history's judgement of a famous man and an infamous woman.

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"Brilliant. Myself and the students thoroughly enjoyed the show and it couldn’t have been better for them in terms of their exam."
Ted Moore, Salford City College

"You got right to the heart of the piece and for the first time, whilst watching Medea, it hit home to me just how relevant to people - women - of today it is... we discussed it for days afterwards"
Jill Haves, Manchester High School for Girls

"An incredibly simple presentation with a surprisingly profound effect"
Neil Stimson, Northallerton College

Below: A short taste of Splendid's Medea

The Trial

The Trial is Splendid Productions' unique adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel.

Josef K is an ordinary man doing ordinary work in an ordinary bank. He wakes up one ordinary morning to discover he is under arrest, but nobody seems prepared to tell him what he is accused of.

‘The Trial’ plunges the audience into a world of petty bureaucracy, inexplicable rules and legal dead-ends, following Josef K as he fights to defend himself against a law he thought was there to protect him.

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"... Splendid Productions' reputation as THE touring theatre company is once again fully justified with their spellbinding adaptation of 'The Trial'"
Teaching Drama Magazine - READ THE WHOLE REVIEW

"Splendid Productions lived up to their name by making Kafka hilarious and accessible without diluting his gravitas"
Bexley Times - READ THE WHOLE REVIEW

"Your best yet!"
Pip Cawte, Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, Bristol

“A really effective piece of theatre, both from a Brechtian and Berkovian perspective.”
Liselore Woltering, The Fallibroome Academy, Macclesfield

Below: Josef K confronts the Examining Magistrate, with a little help from the audience.

Dr Faustus

Doctor Faustus is Christopher Marlowe’s legendary story of a vain scholar's pact with the devil; twenty-four years of unlimited pleasure for the price of one human soul.

But does Faustus really get the best side of the deal? And does a five-hundred year-old cautionary tale have anything to teach the sophisticated human of today?

"...a great show... I was genuinely moved by the end"
John Sentance, Repton School
"An outstanding performance. Powerful and effective (and funny too!)"
Berj Tekerian, Amersham School
"The performance was stunning. The energy and pace was quite incredible."
Susan Frater, Blessed Lord Napier, Banbury

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Below: Faustus writes his 'deed of gift' in the diabolical presence of Mephistopheles. Starts off serious, doesn't stay that way...

Woyzeck

Woyzeck is Georg Büchner’s famous unfinished play about the lowly soldier Franz Woyzeck’s descent into murderous madness. Living in poverty, with his woman, Marie, and a child to support, Woyzeck has agreed to become a medical experiment for the regimental Doctor.

The question is, is it his diet of peas that leads him into the forest with a knife, or the rumours of what Marie has been doing with the peacocking Drum Major?

"Fun but challenging... the performance was sensational"
Kym Martin, Cobham Hall

"...has to rank as one of the most colourful and intelligent interpretations of the work since Tom Waits and Robert Wilson go their hands on it."
British Theatre Guide

"...magnificent... vibrant and vivacious theatre"
Three Weeks

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Below: Your peculiar hosts entice you with the delights that are to come and introduce the first scene, Scene 18.

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Why we made the DVDs

Splendid Productions is primarily a touring theatre and education company, and we particularly enjoy the unique experience of playing to a real live audience and interacting with them in our workshops.

However, over the years, we have had an increasing number of clients requesting a record of the productions for students to refer to, and of course a lot of potential audiences we were unable to fit into our tours, and so we found a way to commit some of our work to disc.

About the Productions

All of our productions were designed to travel the country in a small car, set up and taken down in half an hour, often twice a day. For this reason, they have a cast of three and the most rudimentary of sets. But luckily, the limitations of your bootspace does not restrict the reach of your imagination!

Our approach to theatre, like many of our favourite practitioners, is that it is created more by the actors and the audience than by the lights and the scenery. Both of these productions are great examples of what committed performers can achieve with the barest of essentials.

About the Adaptations

To Splendid, the script is just the starting point for a devising process that aims to create an entertaining and thought-provoking piece that is relevant to the audience that year, that day. We specialise in reinterpreting classic texts to place the fundamental human questions at the heart of the production.

We use a ‘Brechtian’ structure that breaks the action into episodes, using signs, songs and direct address to engage the audience’s minds as well as their attention. It also allows us to break up the traditional narrative in interesting ways.

'Medea' tells both the story of Medea and the legend of Jason and the Argonauts in parallel, contrasting the idealised romance at the beginning of a relationship with the bitter reality of the end - an experience familar to anyone who has been in love (although killing your kids might be taking it a bit far...). We also explore what it takes to become a legend, and why Jason and Medea are remembered so differently.

For 'The Trial', our intention was to give the audience an experience that parallelled that of Josef K, and so our performance begins as soon as the audience enter the auditorium. As brisk and efficient clerks, the cast begin to 'process' the audience according to an unknown set of criteria, rewarding and castigating individuals in an arbitrary manner. But how arbitrary is it? And how compliant can an audience be made to be?

In ‘Dr Faustus’, we interleave the scenes from the play with newly devised episodes, each dealing with a different ‘Deadly Sin’, and posing the question ‘what’s your sin?’.

‘Woyzeck’ takes the idea to its logical conclusion by presenting the episodes in a seemingly random order, and even playing the murder scene three times, asking the audience how their judgement changes as the whole story is revealed.

The scripts are all adapted freely from the original text, but the action and intention remains true to the source material. In the case of ‘Dr Faustus’, much of the language has been updated, but many of Marlowe’s lines have been incorporated into the adaptation. Mephistopheles, for example, uses only speeches from the original text.

We limit our plays to a running time of one hour, which makes them focussed and punchy, but this does mean substantial cuts and reinterpretations of scenes. These are by no means faithful presentations of set texts, but we believe they are witty and vibrant examples of living, contemporary theatre. Now trapped forever on DVD...