Meet The Churchills at CIRCA

Meet The Churchills at CIRCA

WORLD PREMIÈRE - OPENS in CIRCA ONE - 18 JUNE 8pm

LOVE, LIES AND LUNCHEON

The funny, fractious Churchill family exposed
– not quite their ‘Finest Hour’.


It’s 1962 – the Beatles have their first hit, James Bond his first film – and Randolph Churchill is holding a luncheon party to celebrate the 88th birthday of his admired but estranged father. Sir Winston is a fading force and there is unfinished business in his loving but dysfunctional family.

Randolph is determined to finally get the truth about the break down of his wartime first marriage. Sarah, making an uninvited surprise entrance, is desperate to inform her father of her latest new lover. Her mother and Randolph are equally desperate that she doesn’t. And Lady Clementine is intent on ensuring that Winston does not stand for Parliament again at the next election.

Meanwhile, the socially inept Dr Jenkins, a newly appointed research assistant to Randolph, is pressed into service for the day. His unexpected access to the subject of his academic studies gives him the chance to pursue his own agenda and he forms a surprising bond with the wily Winston.

Secrets are revealed, resentments released and new understandings formed, in this fresh and funny perspective on an iconic and larger-than-life family.

For playwright Paul Baker, who is the principal at Waitaki Boys’ High School, Meet the Churchills is only his second play. Talking about the play he says:

“By any definition of greatness, Sir Winston Churchill fits the bill. Yet so often behind a grand façade lies turbulence or tragedy - a family pays a price for greatness.

“The four Churchills depicted in the play – Winston and Clementine, and their children Sarah and Randolph – were all larger-than-life characters. It would be possible to write a play about any of them. They lived grandly, uncompromisingly, and often unhappily. All were dysfunctional, excessive, and generally lacking in reflective qualities – great material for any playwright!

“In the play they are forced together into that aristocratic crucible known as ‘the luncheon’, and faced with half a century of family lies, evasions, tensions and resentments, they are funny and sad, infuriating and outrageous.

“I have set the play in 1962 – a time when Britain is changing fast - and the invented character of Jenkins, the young academic, in his politics, his style of scholarship and his social skills, provides a taste of the new, meritocratic Britain that will soon render the world of the Churchills anachronistic.

“The historian and the playwright in me have battled it out before reaching the inevitable compromise. On the one hand, I am writing a comedy/drama, not a documentary. But on the other hand, audiences of a play about real people love to learn something new about characters or events that interest them. All the Churchills have been abundantly documented, and while the luncheon of Meet the Churchills is imagined, much of their dialogue is based on the historical record.”

Circa Theatre is delighted to be presenting the World Première of this exciting new NZ play. Meet the Churchills gives an entertaining and humorous insight into the fascinating family lives and loves of one of recent history’s most famous figures.

World première of a new NZ play

MEET THE
CHURCHILLS
By PAUL BAKER

Directed by ROSS JOLLY

Starring: RAY HENWOOD, HELEN MOULDER, JEFF KINGSFORD-BROWN,
CARMEL MCGLONE, BYRON COLL

Set Design - John Hodgkins; Lighting Design - Phillip Dexter; Costume Design - Gillie Coxill.

18th JUNE – 16th JULY
1 Taranaki Street, Wellington

$25 SPECIALS - Friday 17 June – 8pm; Sunday 19 June – 4pm;

AFTER SHOW FORUM – Tuesday 21 June

Performance times: Tuesday & Wednesday - 6.30pm
Thursday, Friday, Saturday - 8pm
Sunday - 4pm

Ticket Prices: Adults - $46; Concessions - $38; Friends of Circa - $33
Under 25s - $25; Groups 6+ - $39

PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY PRESENTED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH
PETER and MARY BIGGS PLAYMARKET

BOOKINGS Circa Theatre 1 Taranaki Street, Wellington
Phone 801 7992 www.circa.co.nz

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