Moving Parts Theatre Company are promising “Charles Dickens on acid” as they hit the road with their new stage adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.
00:00Good morning. My name is Phil Hewlett, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this morning to speak to Simona Hughes of Moving Parts Theatre Company, a relatively new theatre company, are on the road with the production which you, Simona, have directed of Vanity Fair, playing Brighton Open Air Theatre, July 3rd and 4th, and then towards the end of the tour, you're playing Lewis Castle, August 9th and 10th.
00:25Tell me about the company, what's the idea behind the company? You've been going, what, three years nearly, haven't you?
00:30Yeah, this, we will be going into our third year. We are a outdoor touring company. We are, our mission is to rediscover classics and find playful theatrical ways to mine the story for contemporary audiences and bring it to life in a wonderful kind of outdoor, playful,
00:59So why Vanity Fair for this year? As you were saying, it's an ambitious project and it doesn't often come to the stage, does it?
01:06It's been very ambitious. It's been a huge labour of love. The novel is epic and thick and full of characters and loads of detail which we've had to condense into this two-hour show, told by an ensemble of storytellers
01:28who, who kind of rattle through all sorts of exciting moments in that period of history, telling the story of these two heroines, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp, these kind of unlikely friends.
01:46They're sort of yin and yang. And they have all sorts of love, betrayal, challenges.
01:57Absolutely. I was going to say in condensing, you have to really presumably identify the key themes. So what is it all about?
02:03It's about their survival in a precarious world. Becky is quite, she's ambitious, bordering on ruthless. She is a survivor and she uses her wits and charm to navigate her way to the top.
02:23And then, you know, she then meets some kind of tricky turning point and finds her way sort of close to the bottom again.
02:34And Amelia is a much more domesticated, sort of gentle, innocent character whose, whose family suffers a sort of downfall, an economic downfall.
02:48And she has to deal with that and deal with a broken heart as well.
02:56And their, so their journeys sort of do this and they end up being very pivotal in each other's lives.
03:06Well, you just described it just now as Charles Dickens on speed. It sounds, it sounds a very appealing place, folks.
03:14You're on the road with dates at the start of the tour, near the start of the tour, Brighton Open Air Theatre, various venues going through to Lewis Castle, August 9th and the 10th.
03:23Good luck with the whole thing and lovely to speak to you. Thank you.
