An award-winning playwright’s Chekhov-inspired comedy, The Good Doctor, will be performed at Worthing’s Connaught Theatre by the town’s burgeoning new professional theatre company on October 2nd and 3rd.
Conn Artists, the theatre company supported by Worthing Theatres and newly funded by the Arts Council, have chosen a comedy by playwright Neil Simon as the follow-up to their previous productions, Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play and The Importance of Being Oscar.
Neil Simon, who has received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer, focuses his play on a series of memorable sketches inspired by a selection of short stories from Russian writer and doctor Anton Chekhov.
The play is directed by Ross Muir, features five actors performing the sketches with live music provided by theatre organist Michael Wooldridge and has been designed by Laura Kimber.
The sketches range from the story of a feisty woman storming a bank to reprimand the manager for his gout and lack of money as well as the tale of a doctor’s assistant bungling a tooth extraction on a sexton to a sketch about a man who offers to put on a show by drowning himself for the low fee of three roubles.
Conn Artists was formed with Worthing Theatres and the Hotbed programme, which nurtures local talent, to provide opportunities for local professional artists to create exciting work in order to help keep regional theatre alive. Their aim has been recently celebrated and supported by an Arts Council grant for £13,000 provided to enable staging The Good Doctor.
Artistic director of Conn Artists and director of The Good Doctor, Ross Muir says: “We chose The Good Doctor to keep the quality of the writing strong which has been a feature of our previous productions. I remembered seeing Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor at the Minerva in Chichester about 20 years ago and it has always stuck with me as a really entertaining piece. The stories are droll, the humour infectious and the fun unending.”
The Good Doctor appears at the Connaught Theatre, Union Place, Worthing. BN11 1LG from Thursday October 2nd to October Friday 3rd at 7.30pm daily, with a matinee on Friday at 2.00pm. Tickets cost £15.00, concessions £2 off, Friends of Worthing Theatres £12 and can be purchased from the box office on 01903 206 206 or online at www.worthingtheatres.co.uk