Lucky Dog Theatre Productions presents Bethnal Green
The harrowing true story of the major 1943 disaster
‘Bethnal Green’ is being staged in The Keep Pub, Castle Street, at 8pm on Tuesday 11th & 18th July 2017 (tickets £10).
Now in their fourth year of performing multiple shows at Guildford Fringe, Lucky Dog are a regular and recommended fixture of this festival and their shows tour to other festivals and theatres throughout the country.
Lucky Dog Theatre Productions is an award-winning professional company from Guildford which produces historically accurate new work about famous lives and events. It formed in 2012 and consists of actors Tony Carpenter and Philip Hutchinson, who are generally regarded as the world’s top Laurel and Hardy re-enactors. They have recreated movie and newsreel footage for public events on the sites where the originals happened and have also been the first people to perform many Laurel and Hardy scripts that had been unseen for years. They are the company behind the accurate historical works ‘JACK THE RIPPER: FACTS, NO FICTION’, ‘MR MERRICK, THE ELEPHANT MAN’ and their hugely popular ‘HATS OFF TO LAUREL AND HARDY’. Highly respected amongst historians and enthusiasts of the subjects they have presented shows about, they have also performed in Los Angeles, Berlin and Prague.
At 8:17pm on 3rd March 1943, the air raid sirens sounded in Bethnal Green, East London. People made their way through the rain to the deep shelter in the partially-built tube station. At 8:27pm, a salvo of rockets sent up from nearby Victoria Park caused a rush to the small entrance. In the darkness, a woman tripped and fell and within seconds 300 people were crushed on the staircase. 173 people, most of them women and children, died. Cutbacks in official staffing and the provision of safety were partly responsible for what happened that night. It was the largest civilian disaster of the Second World War, but – to preserve morale – it was covered up by the Government and the truth only emerged after the end of the hostilities. Few people in the area escaped without losing a family member, friend or neighbour. Lucky Dog Theatre Productions expand their canon with this brand new play, written with the backing and support of The Stairway To Heaven Foundation. Two actors will play a variety of roles, often quoting verbatim survivor testimony. In the space of an hour, the audience will experience the claustrophobia, smell, sounds and darkness of the shelter and the tragedy in this disturbing immersive experience.
★★★★★ – FringeReview
★★★★★ – LoveFringe
★★★★★ – Broadway Baby
★★★★★ – RemoteGoat
★★★★ – FringeGuru’
BOOK TICKETS HERE
Bethnal Green
By Guildford Fringe Festival