Play: The Vaudevillians at Croydon Clocktower (From Wandsworth Guardian)

Play: The Vaudevillians at Croydon Clocktower

9:10am Thursday 1st July 2010

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If Dame Judy Dench is banging down your door wanting to work for you then you must be doing something right.

The multi-award winning actress did just that when she saw theatre group Les Enfants Terribles perform Terrible Enfants a few years ago and now she narrates a new version of the play, which has taken the group, originally from Reigate, all over the world.

They debut their follow-up to Terrible Enfants, The Vaudevillains, at Croydon Clocktower next Thursday and Friday before taking it Latitude Festival and Edinburgh Festival.

"She was lovely and fantastic," says producer James Seager on working with Dame Judy.

"We did a charity show in Surrey and she came down and loved it and said she wanted to get involved if she could, which was extraordinary for us.

"We wrote a new story and decided we would do it as a narrative so gave her a call."

The Vaudevillains is the company's first musical and is set in a Victorian Music Hall called the Empire.

"We call it a murder mystery musical," says Seager.

"At the beginning of the show the owner is found dead and it turns into a whodunit.

"We go back and see the back stories of these five acts involved and why they are all suspects.

"They are all strange and dark characters drawn into the Victorian musical stage where there were a lot of circus style freaks.

"There's a knife thrower, Siamese Striplets, a deranged ventriloquist, a macabre mime artist and a magician and they have all got these weird stories from their past and are murderers in their own right.

"We are going to put cabaret seating in the Clocktower to make it feel like a music hall, then at Latitude we are doing a party afterwards in the woods and then the same in the venue at Edinburgh."

The Vaudevillains, Croydon Clocktower, Katharine Street, July 8 and 9, 7.30pm, £8. Call 020 8253 1030 or croydonclocktower.org.uk.

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