Thu, Feb 1, 7:30 pm - Playing Maggie

Not merely a reflection on how to portray this lady but a live audience with Margaret Thatcher. Pip Utton IS The ‘Iron Lady’! Saviour or witch? Love her or hate her? Not for Pip to decide, only to portray. She divided the nation like no other politician, she changed the face of British, perhaps world politics forever and the effects of her influence and policies are still felt today. Listen to her philosophies, her inspiration and her logic, and then take the chance to question her.

Fri, Feb 2, 7:30 pm - Bacon

Described by critics as the greatest British painter since Turner and by Margaret Thatcher as ‘that dreadful man who paints those horrible pictures’, Francis Bacon remains one of the most challenging and controversial artists of all time. Bacon’s paintings have the power to horrify, excite, disgust, revolt and haunt. It is impossible not to react to his work.  It was probably not only the paintings that so distressed Mrs Thatcher but the man himself. Francis Bacon could spend his mornings painting, his afternoons and evenings drinking champagne and eating, and his nights roaming around Soho dressed in fishnet stockings and a long leather coat looking for ‘rough trade’. His lifestyle full of alcohol, gambling and homosexual promiscuity has created an iconic enigma.

Sat and Sun, Feb 3 and 4, 2:00 pm - Churchill

"All men are worms. I believe I am a glow worm!"

Big Ben chimes and strikes 13; a magical time when once a year for just over an hour the statues of the great statesmen in Parliament Square, London, England, come alive again. Winston Churchill descends from his plinth to indulge himself in three of his greatest pleasures: a glass of Scotch, a cigar and listening to himself talk.  He talks of his childhood, his parents, his education, his army life, his marriage, his painting, writing and bricklaying, his appetites and, of course, he talks of his many years at the centre of the world political stage especially during two world wars.

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it".

Sat, Feb 3, 7:30 pm - Adolf

The 20th century’s most notorious tyrant is daringly and divisively brought to the stage in one of the most successful and powerful solo works ever presented.  Standing before a huge Nazi banner addressing his party faithful, he furnishes his audience with an acute anatomy of fascism; its ideological justifications; its poisoned utopias. This powerful play pushes the audience into looking within themselves to question their own prejudice and intolerance. It plumbs the very source of racism and exposes just how near the surface of our own lives lurks its insidious influence.

What made Adolf Hitler so compulsive? How could any cultured person follow him to destruction, desolation and genocide to leave a long deep scar on the 20th century? How do the extremist parties of today command such huge followings all over the world? Utton takes his audience on a journey into themselves, gently coaxing an understanding of the mindset of a nation that could allow a man such as Hitler to take control…  It is powerful, dramatic, challenging, divisive, illustrative and educational. It is utterly provocative and totally necessary. Everyone should experience it.