Premiere at Marine Theatre

“Smugglers”

Press night

Saturday 9 August at 7.00 pm

14 more performances

The Marine Theatre Lyme Regis has a thrilling new departure this summer. Shanty Theatre Company is bringing a premiere of a new play, “Smugglers,” to the theatre for 15 performances during the high summer season.  Actor Harry Long came to the Marine Theatre last summer as part of a wonderful production of “Treasure Island” and fell in love with the theatre and Lyme Regis, and determined to return with his own company. Working with talented actors with a background both in physical theatre and talented  instrumentalists,  he has developed a creation that will answer every family’s need for a great night out that really has something for everyone. Jo Danvers well known director of the leading theatre company “The Gate” in Notting Hill in London, knows the company well and wrote “Shanty Theatre Company is a vibrant combination of exciting talent”.

Although Margie Barbour is leaving the theatre this summer she is very proud of this new venture. “This is part of my own dream for the theatre, an exciting repertory professional production running for three weeks. It is not at all an end of the pier show but the audience will enjoy it just as much as audiences used to love those shows.”

This play, written by James Long and produced by his actor manager son Harry is in the tradition of seaside summer shows. James Long has researched the exhilarating stories of daring do from Lyme Regis’s naval history and has added a splash of imagination to make this powerful production.  Bristling with battles, comic characters, vile villains, and of course lots of music, this show has something for all ages and will be a barrel of laughs for children and adults alike.  On a dark of a moonless night, a cutter slips through the waves. At the helm is the smuggler they call the Silver Rat, and onboard is an illicit cargo of the finest brandy. Shanty Theatre Company’s new production ‘Smugglers’ tells the tale of Billy, a clever young lad of Lyme, whose one ambition is to join them. Thwarted by a greedy and dangerous new revenue officer, the smugglers fight for their trade and for their lives. But who can they trust, when betrayal will lead them to the hangman’s noose?