Programme 2003/2004

Following on the success of "Agnes of God". La Cosa Nostra has lined up a wonderfully exciting, varied and ambitious programme for the coming year, with no less than four new productions.
We begin our Autumn season 2003 with "Eleemosynary" by Lee Blessing which runs throughout the month of September 2003.
Our next fare is uniquely a double Winter Season by top British Playwright John Godber. "Bouncers" and "Shakers" Both of these shows will tour during the months of March and April 2004.
After a Summer break the company is back in full swing for their most energetic and ambitious production of "Equus" by Peter Shaffer which will tour during the month of September 2004.

Bouncers:
As with Godber's other well known work Teechers, there is a serious side to this comic piece. Whereas Teechers depicts the school system and our attitudes towards public schools in particular, Bouncers seems to poke fun at the idea of "Social Comment".
As relevant today as it was when first published in the early eighties, Bouncers is set in a northern nightclub where the bouncers show and tell the audience how some of the clientele behave before, during, and after their visit to Mr Cinders. There is a scene at the door where several pairs of hopeful male customers try to gain admittance past two of the bouncers. Some succeed, but the reasons for turning away others do not seem logical to the bouncers themselves.
Performed by only four actors, the roles are demanding, to say the least. Each of the four actors plays the part of a bouncer who in turn depicts other young men and women, as the situation demands. The roles-within-the-role vary from lager-lout to nightclub tart.
From an actor's perspective, one of the most difficult aspects of the part comes late in the play when a switch has to be made from the very drunk lager-lout back to a bouncer. Even when acting, the body seems to take a while to sober up

 
Shakers:
Every Town has It's Shakers ,the oh-sotrendy cocktail bar where everybody wants to be seen, from the check out girls to the chinless wonders, from the yuppies to the local lads tittering at the thought of a "Long Slow Comfortable Screw". With "Shakers ", we are given a wickedly funny glimpse of this world, given by four long suffering waitresses, giving a fascinating view of the reality that lurks behind the plastic palms and pina coladas

 

Equus:

A 17 year-old boy, Alan, is brought to a psychiatric hospital because he has blinded several horses with a hoof pick. A psychiatrist, Dysart, works to "normalize" the boy, all the while feeling that though he makes the boy 'safe' for society, he is taking away from him his worship and sexual vitality--both of which are missing in the doctor's own personal life. He actually envies Alan the sexual worship he has experienced.
In spite of his own hang-ups, though, the doctor does help the boy work through his obsession, which identifies the horse Equus with God. But the doctor comments that "when Equus leaves--if he leaves at all--it will be with your intestines in his teeth. . . . I'll give him [Alan] the good Normal world . . . and give him Normal places for his ecstasy. . . Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.
This play explores questions about what is Normal and to what extent society will go to normalize people (or to lock them away somewhere if they can't be normalized). The role of the psychiatrist in this process both challenges and depresses Dr. Dysart, who hates the losses such normalization necessarily requires, and finds himself envying the passionate obsessions of his patient. The play is built wonderfully around symbolic use of masks and staging.