A crackling modern comedy which starred Rory Kinnear and Julie Walters when it was first performed at London’s National Theatre just five years ago comes to Hitchin next week.
The Last of the Haussmans by Stephen Beresford – who also wrote the recent hit film Pride, about lesbian and gay support for striking miners in the 1980s, was hailed by the critics as a searingly honest portrayal of broken Britain.
It centres on Judy Haussman, who is growing old disgracefully in a dilapidated country house which stands as a crumbling monument to her anarchic Swinging Sixties life of free love, revolution and Indian mystics.
She is joined for the summer by her wayward offspring, Nick and Libby, her feisty granddaughter, a randy local doctor and an enigmatic teenage swimmer.
The Bancroft Players production, directed by Peter Matthews, opens next Wednesday night, March 18, in the Richard Whitmore Studio at the Queen Mother Theatre in Walsworth Road, and runs through to the following Saturday.
Tickets are £8 for all performances, with the curtain going up at 7.45pm each night.
If you’re interested in catching this moving portrait of a dysfunctional family, you can find out more at www.qmt.org.uk but be warned – the production includes some ripe language, and occasional smoking!
