22 September 2018
Newsdesk
Following a smash-hit season earlier this year and another sold-out visit to the Edinburgh Fringe, Austentatious: The Improvised Jane Austen Novel returns to the Savoy Theatre, London on 30 September with further dates on 4 November, 2, 9 and 16 December - Jane Austen’s birthday.
Austentatious is an entirely improvised comedy play, starring a cast of the country’s sharpest comic performers, who conjure up a ‘lost’ Jane Austen novel based on nothing more than a title suggested by the audience. Whether you’ve read all of Austen’s works or none of them, this hilarious show will be a totally new experience.
Performed in full Regency costume with live musical accompaniment, no two shows are ever the same. Previous ’lost‘ masterpieces include The Sixth Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Shark and Double 0 Darcy. Expect witty heroines, dashing gents and preposterous plots. Swooning guaranteed.
Ed Bartlam of Underbelly Productions said:
"The West End audience simply can’t get enough of Austentatious’ hilariously unique, Jane Austen-inspired improvisation, so we’ve had to add another two dates to their impressive run at The Savoy. It’s been one of the most successful and best-loved shows we’ve worked with at both the Edinburgh Fringe and Southbank Festival, and now it’s proving itself a huge success in London’s West End too.”
Austentatious added:
"We are honoured to receive such a flattering invitation to extend our West End residency! Nothing could be more pleasing to us than a small, intimate gathering of friends, observed by 1200 more, slightly more distant (but no less dear) friends."
Info: www.austentatiousimpro.com
Last summer, Austentatious recorded a one-off special for BBC Radio 4 and returned to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for their sixth consecutive sell-out run. Since their first show in a London pub in 2011, they have travelled the UK, selling out five national tours and performing over 400 ‘lost’ novels. They won the Chortle Award for ‘Best Character, Improv or Sketch Group’ in 2014 and were named ‘Best Improvised Comedy Act’ in 2016’s What’s On London Comedy Awards.
2017 marked 200 years of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published a few months after Jane Austen’s death in 1817.
Austentatious & Underbelly Productions present
Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel
Performances
30 September 2018 7.00pm
4 November 2018 7.00pm
2 December 2018 7.00pm
9 December 2018 7.00pm
16 December 2018 7.00pm
Savoy Theatre, Savoy Court, Strand, London WC2R 0ET
Booking
www.atgtickets.com/shows/austentatious/
Telephone Booking: 0844 871 7630
Calls cost 7p per minute, plus your phone company's access charge.
Customer Service: 0844 871 7627
Groups Bookings: 020 7206 1174
Access Bookings: 0800 912 6971
More info: www.underbelly.co.uk/austentatious
AUSTENTATIOUS is performed by
Amy Cooke-Hodgson
Andrew Hunter Murray
Cariad Lloyd
Charlotte Gittins
Daniel Nils Roberts
Graham Dickson
Joseph Morpurgo
Rachel Parris
Set Design by Andrew D. Edwards
Lighting Design by Jonathan Monkhouse
PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES
Amy Cooke-Hodgson
As an actor, Amy’s recent credits include Little Boy Blue (ITV), Girlfriends (Union Theatre), Duck Quacks Don't Echo (Sky), Alan Carr's Xmas Specstacular (C4) and leading Sing-a-Long Frozen at the Royal Albert Hall. An experienced improviser, she has performed across Europe and in the US, appearing with Showstopper!, improvised hip-hop band Abandoman, Marcus Brigstocke’s Unavailable for Comment, Bumper Blyton and in No Strings! The Improvised Puppet Musical. An accomplished mezzo-soprano, Amy performed for nine months in the Olivier Award-winning production of La Bohème at Soho Theatre. She co-founded Maple Giant Theatre specialising in contemporary Musical Theatre, directing shows including The Last 5 Years and Larson's tick…tick…BOOM!
Follow her on Twitter at @amycookehodgson and at www.amycookehodgson.com.
Andrew Hunter Murray
Andrew Hunter Murray is a writer and comedian. He works at QI as one of the writers, researching all the material for the BBC Two show. He co-hosts the QI podcast No Such Thing As A Fish and its BBC Two spin-off TV show, No Such Thing As The News, and is a correspondent on BBC Two's The Mash Report. He works at Private Eye magazine, writing jokes and journalism, and presents the Eye’s in-house podcast Page 94. He has performed sell-out runs of his début solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe and in London’s Soho Theatre.
Follow him on Twitter at @andrewhunterm.
Cariad Lloyd
Cariad Lloyd is an actor, improviser, comedian and writer. She has appeared in Peep Show, Have I Got News For You, QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Toast of London, Murder in Successville and Inside No.9. For BBC Radio 4, she has featured in The Now Show, The News Quiz, Museum of Curiosity, The Cariad Radio Show and Sony award-winning Here Be Dragons, as well as hosting the Radio 4 Comedy of the Week podcast. She also hosts her own podcast, GriefCast. She has been improvising for over ten years and has guested with Showstopper!, Baby Wants Candy and The Comedy Store Players, as well as performing in Europe and in the US at the UCB in New York and LA.
Follow her on Twitter at @ladycariad and at www.cariadlloyd.com.
Charlotte Gittins
Charlotte is an actor, documentary-maker and BAFTA Rocliffe-winning writer. As an improviser, she performs and teaches internationally, both as a solo artist and as part of double act Folie à Deux, and she is touring Australia and Europe this Autumn. 2017 saw her first scripted solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe, as well as guest appearances in Improvisation and Early Modern Theatre at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Norway’s Almost Ibsen: An Improvised Tragedy and Suki Webster’s Guest Speaker. Her other stage projects include Grand Theft Impro, three-woman show JCB, Monkey Toast and London’s annual 50-hour Improvathon. Behind the scenes, she has lent her voice to BBC Four and the V&A’s Museum of Childhood, and she travels widely, making arts, music and history films for the BBC.
Follow her on Twitter at @withtwoteas.
Daniel Nils Roberts
Comedian, actor and improviser Daniel Nils Roberts has toured the world and recorded an Audible series with cult favourites Racing Minds; racked up improv experience with a range of successful productions; directed and edited various comedy films, sketches and award-winning shorts; and has twice been nominated for ‘Best Comedy’ at Perth Fringe World, Australia for his character comedy solo shows.
Follow him on Twitter at @DanielNRoberts.
Graham Dickson
Graham is an actor, improviser and writer. His recent TV credits include Drifters (E4), Borderline (C5) and Derren Brown: Pushed to the Edge (C4). He recently wrote and performed his first solo comedy show, The Narcissist, at the Edinburgh Fringe. As an improviser, Graham is the founder and Artistic Director of The Free Association, London's leading long-form improv theatre and school. He has performed improv internationally with Austentatious, and also at The Groundlings theatre in Los Angeles and the UCB Theatre in New York.
Joseph Morpurgo
Joseph Morpurgo has written and performed four solo comedy shows, been nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award and won three Chortle Awards. His Radio 4 series, Joseph Morpurgo’s Walking Tour, airs in the Autumn, and recent television appearances include the BAFTA-nominated Harry & Paul’s Story of the Twos, Murder in Successville and Drunk History. As an improviser, he has performed and taught across the UK, and has guested with groups including The Comedy Store Players and Baby Wants Candy.
Follow him on Twitter at @josephismissing.
Rachel Parris
Rachel is an award-winning musical comedian and actor. Her comic songs have been heard on BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Radio 4, most recently on The Now Show. She has taken four solo shows to the Edinburgh Fringe, and then to the Soho Theatre, London, for which she has been nominated for Best Show (Funny Women), Best Variety Act (Chortle) and has won Best Musical Comedy Show (What’s On London). On TV, she is a regular on BBC Two's The Mash Report, and has previously appeared in The IT Crowd, Murder In Successville, Revolting, and Plebs. Recent stage work includes There Will Be Cake with Marcus Brigstocke and 30 Christmases at the New Diorama Theatre.
Follow her on Twitter at @rachelparris or at www.rachelparris.com.
