Production Notes for Doubloon!

Welcome once again to Christmas at the Sir John Mills and “the perfect alternative to Panto” as one reviewer deemed it.

I was particularly delighted to hear at the first read-through that in our 21^st anniversary year Black Shuck provides the very first joke in this year’s merry hijack of everything we hold dear. Eastern Angles’ very first show, Marsh Fever, was based on the legend of the ghost hound and its habit of chewing people up out of love for its dead master. Yes, love, luve, luff, ruff. (Got the idea?) Anyway as the actors merrily tore into their parts (theatrically speaking) I was moved to hear…( and look away now if you’re one of those irritated by even the suggestion of a plot revelation)…the dog howl heard in the inn is attributed to our very own East Anglian legend, the ghost dog that haunts the long straight roads along our misty coast, or Brown Scud as Julian has rather irreverently  re-named him.

Hmmm. Well, our author’s the one who’s got to drive back to Woodbridge late every night. You might think the only sprawling monster to lie in wait for you along the A12 is Kesgrave, or that the dog breath and slime only ever oozes out of an over zealous traffic cop from Martlesham, but one night the fiery eyes might just belong to Shuck. Tired and irritated from listening to the Anglo-Saxon rhyme on the first track of The Darkness album (ok, so most of our audience won’t get that reference, but perhaps the kids and cool adults can bring the oldsters up to speed) and just maybe really, really fagged off after overhearing some couple from Blythburgh (and they come to our Christmas show from even further afield, I can tell you) chortling with punch-induced laughter at the memory of Julian’s great pun on his name, he may just snap.

And you’ve got to hand it to Ensors, our sponsoring chartered accountants for the third year running. After risking their name alongside wild west cowboys and last year’s blood suckers from Transylvania, this year they’ve got a nice association with brandy smugglers and pirates. Surely other businesses can see the advantage of this strategy? Embrace the worst comparisons and the only way is up. Just ask our General Manager for the forms and we’ll find some nice villains to associate you with.

Next year Ryan Insurance are sponsoring The Edge of the Land, and getting all manner of post-war villains, flood debris and wronged women, while Anglia Railways, we hope, will get the convict ships that sailed to Australia and the bunch of yahoos that dared to mess with our Margaret. (Talking of which, if you could hold off being too nice to Sally Ann in this show, it would help our finances. If she gets to thinking she’s our audiences’ darling it might tempt her agent to put the price up for her return for Margaret Down Under this autumn.)

So there’s nothing more for me to say, but to thank Julian once again for coming up with a cracking script, Pat for matching him with the songs, Dora, Steve, Steve and Penny for realising the look and sound of it all, the actors for getting from starting gate to first performance in less days than many take as an annual holiday, and you for coming and making it such a success every year.

Just watch out as you drive home, don’t hang around on the long straight bits and wait until you are safely inside, preferably with people who haven’t bought tickets yet, before announcing, “it was wonderful darlings…”

Ivan Cutting

Artistic Director