WHAT: Play reading - Quartermain's Terms by Simon Gray
WHERE: FINNBRIT, Fredrikinkatu 20 A 9 (Map)
WHEN: Friday, 25th November, 7pm

Carol Norris will lead a reading of Simon Gray's Quartermain's Terms, a play reminiscent of Chekhov in its touching, grim, and suddenly hilarious moments.

Six teachers and their head — four men, two women — in a small school in Cambridge in the 1960s teach English to foreign students. Japanese, French, and Germans suffer off-stage catastrophes, as do the teachers' dysfunctional off-stage families and lovers during the two years that we meet the seven taking refuge in their staff room.

This play, like Gray's Butley and Otherwise Engaged, won prizes. It attracted John Gielgud and Edward Fox as stars, with Harold Pinter directing.

Free entrance. Bring a bottle and a friend! Remember that play readings are not performances!

WHAT: Play reading - Jack o' the Cudgel, or, The Hero of a Hundred Fights by William McGonagall
WHERE: FINNBRIT, Fredrikinkatu 20 A 9 (MAP)
WHEN: Friday, 28th October, 7pm

Andrew Chesterman will host an evening with WILLIAM McGONAGALL - culminating in a reading of his ONE AND ONLY play Jack o' the Cudgel, or, The Hero of a Hundred Fights.

"A UNIQUE drama!"
"Not a dry eye in the house!!!"
"Shakespeare himself wrote nothing comparable to this amazing work!"
"Pearl of Scottish culture"
Etc.

For newcomers to the Bard of Dundee: his fame as Britain's GREATEST (bad) poet rests mainly on some poetic gems. We will start the evening with a selection of these, as the play is, sadly, fairly short.

As the great man said himself:

"Among the poets of the present day
There is no one on earth who can possibly be able for to gainsay
But that William McGonagall, poet and tragedian,
Is truly the greatest poet that was ever found above or below the meridian."

Free entrance. Bring a bottle and a friend! Remember that play readings are not performances!

WHAT: Play reading - Deathtrap by Ira Levin
WHERE: FINNBRIT, Fredrikinkatu 20 A 9 (MAP)
WHEN: Friday, 30th September, 7pm

The season’s first play reading is one you will never find produced by the Players (come on, directors – I dare you). Ira Levin’s Deathtrap could also be known as The Stage Manager’s Nightmare – but you’ll have to come to the reading to find out why. All the arranger is willing to divulge is that the play is a murder-farce/comedy-thriller with more twists in the plot than can be mentioned, as well as a writer with a block, a psychic, some homosexuality, two female and three male characters, and much fun to be had by all who partake in the madness and mayhem. Arranged by Anna R, who seems to specialise in plays absolutely unproduceable on a Players’ stage – previous play readings including Marat/Sade, What the Butler Saw, and Noises Off …

Bring a bottle if you want one and a friend if you have one – as GB Shaw famously almost said to Winnie the C.