PRE-ORDER SLIM CHANCES, THE AUDIOBOOK

The special-edition 4-CD boxed set of Slim Chances with Additions and Afterthoughts is now available to pre-order on Peth’s Staging Post.

Visit the Merchandise page and pre-order a copy at the click of a button with PayPal.

The boxed set will be shipped to you immediately on its release (we hope in time for Christmas!). The audiobook will also be available soon as a download.

Watch the trailer for Slim Chances with Additions and Afterthoughts here.

AUDIO EDITION OF SLIM CHANCES

Slim Chances … with additions and afterthoughts

We’re delighted to announce the exciting news that a special audio edition of Edward’s book, Slim Chances and Unscheduled Appearances, is very soon to be released and will be available in time for Christmas.

The approximately five-hour compilation – necessarily only the tip of the iceberg – will include snatches of the original music from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (NT, 1967) and Nicholas Nickleby (RSC, 1980), Edward’s song from the Broadway musical Coco, and two numbers by Noël Coward, with Jason Carr at the piano. It will also contain new, never-before-published spoken material.

This unique recording will be available in a limited box-set edition (4 CDs), with notes and illustrations, and as a download.

Stay tuned for more news of the release date and where to purchase.

MY PERFECT MIND: TOUR DATES AND LONDON PREMIERE

Rehearsals for Edward’s two-man King Lear project, My Perfect Mind, begin in December and the show will open in London next spring, preceded by a six-week tour.

Joining Edward will be Paul Hunter, his clown companion from The Fantasticks (Duchess Theatre, 2010). Kathryn Hunter will direct, and the show is designed by Michael Vale. My Perfect Mind is co-produced by Told by an Idiot, the Young Vic and the Drum Theatre Plymouth.

The touring and London dates are as follows:

14 February  – 2 March, 2013: Drum Theatre Plymouth

5 – 9 March, 2013: unitytheatre, Liverpool

19 – 23 March, 2013: Salisbury Playhouse, Salisbury

3 – 20 April, 2013: Young Vic, London (The Maria)

Booking for the London run is now open to Friends of the Young Vic. Public booking will be available from 10 a.m. on Thursday, 25 October.

Don’t miss this unique, richly comic and profoundly moving exploration of Shakespeare’s Lear, into which is intimately woven Edward’s own remarkable journey.

Charcoal drawing by EP

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO THE BOOK FOXES!

Last week, the popular bibliophile site Vulpes Libris celebrated in style its fifth anniversary. As part of the festivities, Edward, a distinguished honorary Book Fox, contributed this characteristically eloquent and idiosyncratic appreciation: Strangers, Spinal Tap and Shostakovich.

West Hampstead fox. Photo by EP

SHAW'S CANDIDA ON RADIO 4 EXTRA

A watercolour portrait of Shaw from 1894,
the year he wrote Candida, by Sir John Bernard Partridge.
National Portrait Gallery

At 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Saturday 7th July and at 4 a.m. on Sunday 8th July, BBC Radio 4 Extra will broadcast a repeat of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida starring Edward as the Reverend James Morell and Hannah Gordon as his wife ‘Candida’. Also featuring Christopher Guard as the poet Marchbanks.

This adaptation of Shaw’s play was originally broadcast in August 1977 on Radio 4 and was directed by Ronald Mason.

To read what Edward wrote about it in an earlier blog, click here.

For those of you outside the UK, you can listen online. BBC Radio also provides a ‘listen again’ facility.

Incidentally, 1977 was the year in which Edward first played Wilde’s Canon Chasuble – in a production for the Actors’ Company.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST IN WINDSOR

Edward is to reprise his critically acclaimed role as Canon Chasuble in the musical version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at the Theatre Royal Windsor. The show will run for a strictly limited season of three weeks from 20 June to 7 July.

He is joined once again by Gyles Brandreth as Lady Bracknell, and among the new members of the cast is Louise Gold as Miss Prism, with whom he sings the delightful, show-stopping duet ‘It All Began in a Garden’.

Performance times: Mon-Sat 8pm, Thu 2.30pm, Sat 4.45pm.

To book online, click here.

Photo by EP

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING AT THE NFI

A rare chance to see the BBC version of Zeffirelli’s 1965 National Theatre production of Much Ado About Nothing in which Edward played the part of Conrade. The 1967 film will be screened at the BFI Southbank (NFT1) at 6 p.m. on Tuesday 24 April as part of the BFI’s unLOCked strand. Click here to book.

DICKENS'S LONDON: PRISON TO THE PUB

Today, 7th February, marks the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. Watch this BBC News feature in which Edward accompanies Dr Tony Williams on a walking tour of some of the Southwark landmarks associated with Dickens and in which he reads from Little Dorrit.

OXFORD LECTURE

On Monday 14th May, at the invitation of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), University of Oxford, Edward will deliver a public lecture entitled ‘Controlling the Ecstasy; or daring to direct the Bacchae’.

The basis of his lecture will be his innovative production of Euripides’ Bacchae (in a translation by William Arrowsmith) for the Actors’ Company in the 1970s.

The APGRD is an internationally renowned research centre and a pioneer in the study and promotion of classical performance reception.

The lecture will take place at 2.15 p.m. in the Lecture Theatre of the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies (66 St Giles’), Oxford. All are welcome to attend.

EDWARD IN BBC1'S DOCTORS

Catch Edward’s guest appearance as lawyer Bagley Grimsdale in two episodes of the BBC1 series Doctors: ‘Great Expectations’ on Monday 30th January and ‘Crocodile Tears’ on Tuesday 31st, both at 1.45 p.m.