The Henley Fringe Festival starts tomorrow (From Bucks Free Press)
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The Henley Fringe Festival starts tomorrow
10:00am Sunday 15th July 2012 in Freetime By Rebecca Cain
Russell Floyd
HENLEY Fringe Festival returns next week with a diary of the UK's talented theatre and music productions.
Venues across the town will host the fifth season ranging from the Wind In The Willows to evening productions of Shakespeare.
Brighton-based theatre company Two Bins makes its Henley Festival Fringe début with Hangman - a shocking-but-true tale of English executioner John Ellis.
Set backstage in a provincial theatre in 1920s Kent, it is inspired by the short-lived stage career and tragic life of John Ellis, who executed the notorious murderer Dr Crippen and 200 others.
First performed in Brighton in 2011, the play won rave reviews.
Written by Maggie Clune and based in part on actual testimonies from the National Archives, the play focuses on Ellis’s role in what was arguably the most notorious miscarriage of justice of the era - the execution in 1923 of Edith Thompson. The full details of the Thompson case remain covered by official secrecy until 2023.
The six-strong cast is led by Russell Floyd (Ellis), perhaps best known as Michael Rose in EastEnders (1995-1999) and as DC Ken Drummond in The Bill (2002-2005).
HANGMAN by Maggie Clune, directed by Martin Nichols, is at The Henley Room, Hotel Du Vin, Henley, from Monday, July 16 to July 20 at 7pm. Tickets are £9 from http://www.henleyfringe.org/hangman/
