Pip Utton, a firm favourite on the Artsreach circuit, has produced spellbinding performances over recent years, including ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’, ‘Chaplin’ and ‘Charles Dickens’. Now Artsreach present one last opportunity to see him perform ‘Churchill’ in what has been an acclaimed run of shows across Dorset in 2013
Big Ben chimes and strikes thirteen: a magical time when once a year the statues of the great statesmen in Parliament Square, London, 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 speaks of his childhood, his education, his army life, his marriage, his painting, writing and bricklaying and of course, his many years at the centre of the world political stage during two world wars.
His new play is not an attempt to decide on Churchill’s greatness; it is not an attempt to judge. It is just an evening spent in the entertaining company of the man whose life spanned two centuries and saw the decline of the British Empire; the man who spent fifty years at the heart of political life in Westminster. The man who held most of the high offices of State, who was Prime Minister twice, whose paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, who in 1963 was made the first honorary citizen of the United States and who in 2002, in a BBC poll, was voted the Greatest Briton in history.
“The theatre disappears and you feel that you are in a very intimate conversation with the great man himself …laughter and tears go hand in hand….Pip Utton takes you into a history that we must never and will never forget”
Andy Doornhein, Theatre Paradijs
Fri 12th April, 7:30pm Comrades Hall, Broadwindsor 01308 868582