Learning from the mistakes of the first Crude Apache Event, and having 4 nights including Saturday:

If you've ever worried about doing the ironing, take a night off to see Crude Apache when they take over Norwich Arts Centre for 4 nights in April.

'The Crude Apache Event II', promises to be a memorable night of comedy, music, drama, gothic horror and lots of laundry.

Building on last years success this total evenings entertainment has something for everyone of any age. Starting at 7.30, the show will include:
'The Cat in the Hat' - a piece based on Dr. Seuss' classic childrens books.
'The Ironing Board Waltz' -Waltzing ironing boards batter fishing chips.
'The Nimmo Twins ' - Comedy sketches by "Normal for Norfolk" writer Karl Minns.
'How to be Big and Clever' - Damn straight.
'Members only' - Kinky politics with music.

Away from the main auditorium, there will be music from (amongst others) Heaven Shouting, Folk Off An Isle, and Timothy Lane, and cabaret compered by the infamous Lionel Strangely-Brown, of the Costessey Retail Association Players.

As well as all this, there will be Ghouls, Ghosts and Vampyres, wierd and wonderful people and happenings, and a chance to meet THE crude Apache !

Our first night on Wednesday was quiet, and prompted this review from Jo Malone, of the Evening News:

Fun & frolics all the way...

It is fun to have fun but you have to know how. Never was a truer word spoken than this, one of the lines from The Cat In The Hat sketch at The Event, Crude Apache's show of fun and frolics at Norwich Arts Centre.
Cats in hats was handed over to some very talented little 'uns to open the night and they gave us a taste of what local company Crude Apache can do when it chooses.
The Event was a mixed bag, some of it funny, some of it not. Some of it was meant to be and wasn't, some of it probably was not meant to be, and was.
Sixth former and stand up comedian Shalane definitely was. She made the first half worthwhile, after that hatted cat, for me. Her love for Darryl and tales of visits to the DSS, auntie as private detective and life in the Norfolk world of the Sharon and Tracie characters we love, lifted our laughter and gave us a great reason to clap - helpful to keep warm in the chilly arts centre.
The Event is a long night, but the second half was worth all that piano polishing we watched in the first.
I don't know why waltzing ironing boards should be funny, but they are and this was superb.
Jo Malone, Evening News, 10/4/97

Event II Live
In the Auditorium

7.30 An introduction by The Flods
Directed by Simon Flod
(Subtitles)

7.37 The Cat In the Hat
By Doctor Seuss. Bought to you by The Serious Fun Committee (UK).
It's fun to have fun but you have to know how.

The Cat: Felix Rehberg
Sally: Aishia Kent
Robert: Jo Brownlie
Thing 1: Tom Jennings
Thing 2: Louis Rebecca
Mother: Crystal Bennett
Fish/Director: Saskia Kent
Music: Fiona Mitchell
Props & Puppets: Anna Reid
Understudy: Saff Edye

8.45 Scale and Polish
A flirtation with Bartok

Piano: Corrinne Livingstone
Dusters: Rachel Hardy, Celia Little

8.55 Members Only
Mistress Overdone welcomes us to her private parlour and shares a few sordid secrets about her 'classy' clientele...

Mistress Overdone: Fiona Mitchell
Sir Michael: Bradley Chase
Archie the pianist: Mark Brown
Words and Music by: Fiona Mitchell

9.02 Big and Clever
Is there a great dull aching void in the centre of your existence? Well go out and get yourself a life! Timothy Lane and Russell Turner explain all.

9.12 The Lament of Lily Von Mort
Amanda Greenway.

9.50 The Ironing Board Waltz
Have you ever wondered what your ironing boards get up to when you are out? The truth is outed as six ironing boards recreate that magic moment when fate decreed that from hence forth ironing boards shall be to waltz as chips are to fish.
Nick Warburton, Kathryn Floyd, Gill Evans, Russell Turner, Jeremy Bristol, Anna Reid, Jon Creek, Jerry Ferley, Tamsin Young & Simon Floyd.

9.58 The Nimmo Twins
Using only the freshest plumpest English words and phrases, five sketches from the people who take the B out of Banal
Karl Minns and Owen Evans

10.19 A Final Farewell from The Flods
Who were: Kathy Flod, Dave Popkin, Jane Wirgman, Saff Edye & Anna Reid.
(Repeat, subtitles)

10.30 Close

Event II Gold
In The Bar

8.10 A round with Lionel Strangely-Brown
The Costessey impresario invites you to the bar to meet a few of his friends:

Cassie Frontbottom Sings
The Chanteuse performs a song from the golden age of the Gin Palace. Accompanied by Googie Down-Trodden.(Stereo)

Shalane
Hoping to give up stand up comedy & take a full time beauty therapy course.

Great Moments in Body Hair
The Crude Apache natural history unit explain all.

Folk Off an Isle
The McClouds return to Norwich for one last Highland fling.
(Saturday Only except in Scotland)

Plus: Pip Cartwright, Timothy Lane, Heaven Shouting, The Fly Skull Quartet and the Crude Apache.

9.22 Last Orders
Entertainment from the Other Side, featuring The Spice Ghouls & Consumption.

11.00 Close

The Event II was brought to you by:
Master of the Lights: Lee Foley
Master of the stage: Ben Brown
Master of the sounds: Mark Hewittson
Master of the door: Duncan Rowe
Master of the camera: Robert Eke
Master of the paper: Dave Popkin
Mistress of the moolah: Kathryn Floyd
Mistress of the Gothic: Amanda Greenway
Master of the Universe: Jo Edye

Thank You Thank You Thank You
Jax 2001, a Clothes Oddity, Jonathon, Ian, Frank the folkie, Michael D., Nick John, Jo Thompson, Helen Selleck, Pam Reekie, Norman, Nigel and all the Arts Centre staff, Jo Malone, Loosewig theatre co, Johny B., Rupert Reddington, Harry, Quarkie and the Tribe, Magpie Printers, Norwich Screen Art and everyone else who's helped.

In the summer of 1993, following six months of rehearsals, recriminations and drunken brawls, the people who were to become the founder members of Crude Apache performed 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' at Bruce Lacey's midsummer solstice party.
Now, four years on and wiser in the ways of theatre, it was time to do it again.
The press release read:

Following the great popular success of open-air summer shows about Kett's Rebellion, Billy Bluelight and the building of Norwich cathedral, local theatre company, Crude Apache, are teaming up with Shakespeare for a mischievous and musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Probably the Bard's funniest, most popular and accessible comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream will be presented as part of Norwich's Theatre in the Parks season and at selected venues around the county, starting next Saturday. (June 28th)

Crude Apache have taken Shakespeare's tale of love and magic, fairies, mortals and ass-headed Bottom, "cut out the boring bits" and added five songs, four original and one using words from the text.

Co-directors Russell Turner and Tim Lane, who also co-wrote the songs, say the show will be "rude, loud and funny: rude because it's Shakespeare, loud because its outdoors, and funny because we say so."

Russell is probably the only former Mastermind semi-finalist to play the part of Puck while Tim, a member of local band of musical pranksters Doomweasel, plays Oberon, King of the Fairies.

They say, "We like to think we are staying true to the original spirit of Shakespeare and entertaining the groundlings. This is Shakespeare for everyone; fun, fast-moving and free."

In conceiving this show our primary concern was that it should be punter-friendly i.e. fast, loud rude and funny.
A Midsummer Night's Dream was ideal for this since even those scenes which are generally considered a bit boring are rich in comic potential.
Also it is free from that dreadful affliction of most of Shakespeare's comedies and romances: a confused, boring and utterly implausible Act 5. Instead, all the reconcilliation nonsense is got out of the way at the end of Act 4, allowing us to savour the spectacle of the Mechanicals making asses of themselves, the Court and Lovers feeling superior and the Fairies rounding it all off nicely.

We have been criticised on the grounds that our version lost much of the subtlety of the play. This may be true, but we believe it is part of the pay-off when presenting Shakespeare to an audience of non-experts: some of the beauty must be sacrificed in order to grab the attention of a modern audience not well versed in the intricacies of Elizabethan language, theatre and society. Hopefully a gentle introduction to the Bard may inspire some people to delve deeper into those intricacies.

All in all we had a great time putting on this show. The cast, band and crew were a joy to work with, the audiences large, appreciative and generous and the weather, discounting freak whirlwinds and monsoons, came good in the end.

Click here for a Midsummer Night's Dream Gallery

The Cast:

Theseus: Carl Burrage
Hippolyta: Anna Reid
Philostrate: Robin Goodfellow
Egeus: Jim Kennedy
Hermia: Tiffany Lacey
Demetrius: Jon Creek
Lysander: Benji Brown
Helena: Lucy Carlson
Bottom: Jo Edye
Flute: Duncan Jack
Snout: Chris Phillips
Snug: Lucy Beaumont
Starveling: Nick Warburton
Quince: Sharon Fickling
Puck: Russell Turner
Fairies: Nicky Turner, Elliot Stewart, Alex Bartram
Titania: Jos Mack
Oberon: Timothy Lane
Moon Dog: Woofy

The Band

Tuba: Steve Wilson
Guitar: Rick Warrens
Accordian: Liz Holder
Percussion: Tim Dew
Viola: Hilary Lewis
Musical Director: Timothy Lane

The Crew:

Directed by: Timothy Lane & Russell Turner
Stage Managers: Nicky Turner & Saff Edye
Crew: Chris Bond & Julie Curl
Costumes: Nicky Falgate & Amanda Trendell
Music & lyrics: Timothy Lane & Russell Turner
Publicity: Tom Carver
Photography: Bert Eke
Poster & Programme: Jo Edye
Voice work: Jon Baker
Ass's head by: Jon Page

With many thanks to:
Helen Selleck, Joe Zammit, Bruce Lacey & Jenny, Trevor the RQ at the TA, Tesco, Bob at The Car Warehouse, Quidenham Childrens Hospice, Partco Autostore ltd, Brendan Smith, Tony Stannard, First Wymondham Scout Group, Brian Clough & all our Mum's for tactical awareness, Pierre Smirnoff and, of course, William Shakespeare.

And we got a good, albeit minimalist, review:

Midsummer dream so surreal

The rain stayed away and the crowds came out.
Crude Apache's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream was the first truly summer performance of the Theatre in the Parks festival.
And hundreds of people poured into Chapelfield Gardens to see it.
In truly Crude Apache style things were even more surreal than usual in the woods near Athens on this particular Midsummer Night.
Fairies flitted between Hawaiian shirts and luminous green hats and Mafioso-style suits and sunglasses.
And the players played "Twister" wearing stripy bobble hats and overalls shouting "Bellows-R-Us".
This was a lively, exciting and very funny interpretation of the play with five of the company's own songs interspersed to spice it up even more.
There were wonderful performances from Bottom, Puck and Helena - not forgetting Oberon King of the Fairies with his gold chain, shades and goatee beard!

Abigail Saltmarsh, Evening News

And another one:

If you missed Crude Apache's highly inventive and entertaining treatment of Shakespeare's best loved comedy then you deserve to wear an asses head and spend the night in a dark forest.
There were menacing CIA fairies in black shades who stripped down to their civvies of flourescent beachwear.
There was a gleeful game of Twister with the dippy mechanicals.
There was a lberal sprinkling of songs from the pen of Tim Armishaw. (Surely "Timothy Lane and Russell Turner", Ed.)
Does this sound like any production of MSND you've ever seen before? Probably not, but then Crude Apache shows are never predictable.
After a slow start in the opening scene, we were soon whisked away for 90 minutes of "delusion, confusion and delight". Bottom (Jo Edye) and his fellow mechanicals never failed to provide the laughs and the cartoonish conflict between diminutive Titania (Jos Mack) and larger-than-life Oberon (Tim Armishaw) was highly amusing.
A strong cast, but mention must go to Lucy Carlson who was hysterical - in all senses - as the lovelorn and confused Helena. Also Russell Turner, who made a perfect Puck, wiry and crafty, slipping between the lovers, the fairies and mechanicals, twisting the strands of the fantasy.
As the slick grand finale song proclaimed..."what a night!"

Phoebe, Out and About magazine.

Our biggest project to date has its own special page

As part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, we were asked to take part in a 'Theatre Showcase' at Norwich's Maddermarket Theatre. Bridget O'brien came up with the idea for Remembrance Day:

Listening to the lyrics of Penny Lane one afternoon I suddenly realised that all the characters are obsessed in some way - except the nurse, who is in a world of her own.
Trying to picture this world, I began to imagine a toy-town existence with an under current of something very, very wrong.

Devised and Directed by Bridget O'Brien

Performed by:
Russell J. Turner
Jo Edye
Nicky Turner
Bridget O'Brien
Carl Burrage

Sound by Chris Bond and Mark Hewettson
Stage manager: Rupert Reddington

Crude Apache were

Uzbekistan

In the Neurovision Song Contest

The Eurovision song contest is coming to Norwich in the form of Neurovision, an evening of music, comedy and light entertainment.
Staged as a televised event with a giant video screen, sattelite link up, innovative tap dancing and of course, representatives from 8 participating countries, Neurovision will be just like the real thing

Neurovision will be performed by Norwich musicians, actors, dancers and techno wizards.

A one night special, in the Art Centre Bar, organised by Chris Phillips who writes:

Originally Yuletide Log was going to be a very small event, but like all these things, it soon snowballed into a full-sized rabid Rottweiler straining at it's tether.
I had never organized anything other than a pub gig before and to say I had thrown myself in at the deep end would not do justice to my predicament.
However, apart from a few glaringly obvious glitches, such as nobody to introduce the acts, and a bizarre ticket selling system which meant that tickets handed in on the door were being resold leading to the Arts Centre becoming stupendously overcrowded, the event was a relative success.

Lionel Strangely-Brown kicked off the evening in his usual sardonic manner, and in one fell swoop, managed to offend all but those with the sensitivity of a cast-iron elephant. It was only the Prozac which stopped me from slashing my wrists as he described my play as "rather like his hair - overlong, styleless and out-dated." Bastard.

Messiah! was Christmas '97's offering of Crude Apache's now traditional Xmas pub show. "Oh Mary, you're such a poisonous tart!" is a line that will never be erased from the memory of the Log's audience for some time to come. Surely it was only a matter of time before an army of bible-bashers turned up to throw holy water over the cast! How did they get away with it? Who knows...

Speaking of getting away with it, Folk Off An Isle made a welcome return to the mainland having made the big-time with their performance being broadcast live to the audience of Channel 5. The audience, a reliable source informed me, was washing up the milk bottles at the time, and missed it. Shame, really. It was their best effort since...er...the last time.

Heaven Shouting, what can I say? Probably a lot of things really. None of which would be relevant to this performance. But I could say "brilliant" - harmonies so tight you could hardly fit a wafer-thin mint between them. Actually, I'm sure I remember Lionel Strangely-Brown saying something about peaches and hankies.

The musical interlude provided us with, amongst other things, a vitriolic love song about someone not a million miles away from the Crude Apache stable. Now who could THAT be...

Mr. Karl "soon-to-be-very-famous" Minns performed his version of Radio 4's Shipping Forecast, which showed just why he is getting the attention he deserves. Every line had the audience laughing out loud, which unfortunately for me, made it a very hard act to follow. Nobody likes a clever-trousers! (Except, it seems, the BBC).

The second deep-end I had all too willingly dived into that evening was the performance of my first effort at trying to write something funny. Just two descriptions sum up "Jobseeker!" - overlong and under-rehearsed.
If you saw it, please erase it from your memory.

Despite what Chris says, his first attempt at writing a short comic play wasn't that bad, and certainly had some extremely funny lines and ideas. It was certainly under-rehearsed, but circumstances conspired against him somewhat. His only glaring error, as far as I could see, was to have a prompt with the quietest voice in the known universe. Actually, that gives me an idea for a sketch...

Performers: Lucy Beaumont, Ian Brownlie, Sian Croose, Caroline Davison, Tim Dew, Nicki Dixon, Jo Edye, Saff Edye, Carol Harvey, Claire Kidman, Timothy Lane, Karl Minns, Fiona Mitchell, Chris Phillips, Dave Popkin, Elliot Stewart, Russell Turner, Francis Watt, Jane Wirgman.

Crew: Chris Bond, Julie Curl, Bert Eke, Amanda Greenway, Chris Phillips.

Our annual Xmas pub show, a spoof nativity written enrirely in rehearsal, including 3 songs, with a small group who were good friends. Absolute bliss.

Islamic fundamentalists and sensitive God-botherers are warned to stay away from Crude Apache's "Messiah!-The Greatest Story Never Told", when it tours city and county hostelries next week.
The 20 minute spoof nativity is the latest Xmas pub show from the popular city group, whose past hits include "Godfather Xmas" and "On The Ball, Cinders".
Stupid wise men, philosophising shepherds and a hen-pecked Joseph are promised, along with song, dance and some terrible gags.

Jo Edye
Tim Lane
Russell J. Turner
Lucy Beaumont
Nicki Dixon
Elliot Stewart