John Gielgud Theatre.

STARS IN THE MORNING SKY
by Alexander Galin
Translated by Michael Glenny & Cathy Porter
Directed by Matt Wilde
Designed by Adrian Linford
Tuesday 28 May – Thursday 6 June at 7.45pm
Matinée: Saturday 1 June at 2.30pm
Tickets: £7.50, Friends of RADA £6.50, Concessions £6.50
Based on a real-life situation, this Russian play concerns the events surrounding the
1980 Moscow Olympic Games. As visitors and athletes poured into the city the police rounded up
the capital’s prostitutes from cafés, bars and restaurants and deported them to makeshift
lodgings a hundred kilometres from the centre of the city.
Thrown together in an unfamiliar rural situation the tensions and fantasies of a desperate
group of women: Laura, the young dreamer, Anna, the hard bitten realist and their
companions make for a compelling and ultimately moving story.

GBS Theatre

ENTERTAINING STRANGERS
by David Edgar
Directed by Jeff Teare. Designed by Sue Mayes
Wednesday 29 May – Friday 7 June at 7.15pm
Matinée: Wednesday 5 June at 2.30pm
Tickets: £7.50, Friends of RADA £6.50, Concessions £6.50
First performed as a community play for Dorchester, this intriguing play was re-developed for the
National Theatre and for BBC Radio.
Set in the early years of the nineteenth century it charts the epic struggle between Henry
Moule, the newly arrived parson and Sarah Eldridge, the formidable publican’s wife and
mater familias, who founds a brewery.
Edgar paints a broad and detailed canvas of regional life in a period when religion was a
real force in people’s lives which were dominated by poverty and the “demon drink”; a
powerful and stirring piece of theatre.

Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre

A SMALL FAMILY BUSINESS
by Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by Robin Midgley. Designed by Vikie le Saché
Thursday 30 May – Saturday 8 June at 7.30pm
Matinée: Saturday 8 June at 2.30pm
Tickets: £7.50, Friends of RADA £6.50, Concessions £6.50
Friends’ Night: Monday 3 June to include an aftershow discussion with
the director and cast, FREE to Friends of RADA, £3.00 for non-Friends
In the life of any businessman comes the great opportunity. When Jack McCracken’s father-in- law
offers him such a chance he decides to seize it with both hands. But he hasn’t reckoned
on the help and hindrance of his dysfunctional family – a gallery of some of the most
singular characters imaginable.
As we might imagine Ayckbourn relishes in the humorous possibilities of middle-class England.
This clever comedy was specially written for the National Theatre. We are delighted to
welcome back Robin Midgley as director, who was the original director in the West End of
Ayckbourn’s classic How the Other Half Loves.

GBS Theatre

THE DEVIL IN DRAG
by Dario Fo
Translated by Ed Emery
Directed by Carl Heap. Designed by Jane Linz Roberts
Friday 28 June – Friday 5 July at 7.15pm
Matinée: Wednesday 3 July at 2.30pm
Tickets: £7.50, Friends of RADA £6.50, Concessions £6.50
Dario Fo is one of the giants of Italian contemporary theatre. Playwright, performer and
creator of a whole style of irreverent and satirical comedy in the great tradition of political
cabaret and commedia dell’arte.
First adapted for the National Theatre it is, as the title suggests, a scurrilous, rude and
boisterous satire on mediaeval ideas about demonology. Not for those easily shocked, or of
faint heart, but enormous fun.
We welcome back Carl Heap, one of the founders of the Mediaeval Players, to direct.

Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre

TRELAWNEY OF THE WELLS
by Arthur Wing Pinero
Directed by Brigid Panet
Saturday 29 June – Saturday 6 July at 7.30pm
Matinée: Saturday 6 July at 2.30pm
Tickets: £7.50, Friends of RADA £6.50, Concessions £6.50
Friends’ Night: Monday 1 July to include an aftershow discussion with
the director and cast, FREE to Friends of RADA, £3.00 for non-Friends
One of the great plays about the theatre. Based on the real-life of Tom Robertson, the first
“realist” playwright in England, and his early years as an actor at Sadlers Wells, this is a
brilliant, funny and touching account of the backstage world of the Victorian theatre.
At the centre of the story is the bewitching Rose Trelawney, ingenue and darling of society.
It is her struggle between art and life that exemplifies every actor’s dilemma.
Pinero, an original member of the RADA Council, knew the theatre world intimately and
re-creates it with love and compassion.

SPECIAL FRIENDS EVENT

ROYAL NATIONAL THEATRE
LYTTLETON THEATRE

A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY
A novel by John Irving. Adapted by Simon Bent
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because
of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even
because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is
the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
Irving’s modern American epic explodes onto the stage in a
paradoxical challenge to memory, life, God and prayer.
Tuesday 18 June at 7.45pm
Starring RADA Graduate Aidan McArdle
(first recipient of the Friends Scholarship in 1996)
We have a limited number of tickets available
to Friends at a special price of £12.00 each.
Tickets are available to Friends of RADA
through the Academy Box Office.

RADA TOURS RADA TOURS

Visit the stunning newly developed buildings in Gower Street and Malet Street. See the
three new theatres and the facilities available to the students during their course.
Learn about the beginnings of the Academy, the involvement of its graduates and the
Academy’s future development.
Your guide will be a RADA graduate who will give you an insight into the Academy
from a student’s point of view.
You can complete your tour with a matinée performance and/or a cream tea in the RADA Bar.

During the Summer Season, public tours are available on Saturday 1 June and Saturday
29 June before the matinée performances. To book a place on one of these tours, please
contact Chris Deakin on 020 7908 4737. Price for tours is £6 per person. Places are
limited so please book early.