Details

Think of white faced circus clowns, brightly coloured costumes, lots of verbal and physical jokes, and slapstick sequences (literally using 'slapsticks') and mix it with live music, pathos, a strong poetic text and a very strong storyline and you begin to get an idea of what this company are all about. The play (which is broadly based on Chaucer's 'The Wife of Bath') evokes a vivid world of macabre doctors, strange broken hearted women, corrupt priests, charlatans, and a boat that glides through the stars and steers to the very edge of hell itself. At times it feels like a fairytale, but it pulls no punches. The subject matter is rape. The company, the core of whom met at 'The International School of Comic Acting' in Italy, normally work outdoors in rural communities with gas lighting and a travelling stage. They are coming indoors and appearing in London for the first time. Take care! They say they regard the whole theatre as part of the stage. You might literally find actors on your lap! The play gets to the heart of some age old questions about love and marriage. It's really two stories. One tells the tale of the Wife herself, and of her five husbands - and her question to the Canterbury pilgrims: What do women really want from men and marriage? The other tells her story of the young knight who, after being condemned to death for rape, is given the chance by a 'women's love court' to redeem himself by finding the answer to the question: What do women most desire? In getting the answer he must himself make a choice: to have a wife who is beautiful but fickle, or one who is old and ugly but faithful.

Creatives/Company

Author: Pete Talbot
Company: Rude Mechanical Theatre