Habeas Corpus

By arrangement with Origin Theatrical on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. GRADS’ next production is the hilarious, raunchy farce Habeas Corpus by renowned British playwright Alan Bennett, directed by Edgar Metcalfe

Playing at The Dolphin Theatre, UWA, 7.30 pm 20 July to 4 August, Wednesdays to Saturdays.

Director Edgar Metcalfe AM CITWA is one of the driving forces behind Australian professional theatre for nearly half a century, who has directed several wonderful plays for GRADS. Habeas Corpus is Alan Bennett at his incomparable best.

Permissive society is taken to task in this classic farcical comedy in which the characters, stereotypes as their names suggest, move – and indeed dance – in and out through a maze of mistaken identities and sexual encounters. In Hove, Brighton in the 1960s, the lust and longing of the permissive society has well and truly taken hold of the apparently respectable Wicksteed family. The determination to put sex and the satisfaction of the body before anything else is the ruling passion of their lives. With a succession of characters ranging from a rampant doctor and a randy vicar, to a frustrated flat chested spinster and a baffled domestic cleaner, this is a rollicking, saucy English farce that will have ‘em rolling in the aisles! Like some saucy Macgill seaside postcard or an end-of-the-pier romp, identities are mistaken, the wrong knockers admiringly fondled, and libidos burst out of enforced hibernation!