Macbeth
5th February - 13th March and 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 22nd April
Official First Night: Friday 6th February
  Matinees at 2.30pm on Saturdays, 14th, 21st, 28th February and 6th March 
and Thursdays 4th March and 22nd April.

Shakespeare’s tragedy of a man’s headlong fall from acclaimed hero to bloody 
tyrant.

 The Changeling
18th March - 12th April and 15th, 20th, 21st, 23rd and 24th April
Official First Night: Friday 19th March
Matinees at 2.30pm on Saturdays, 20th, 27th March and 3rd, 24th April.
Please note that there will be no performance on Friday, April 9th.

 A Jacobean tragi-comic noir by Middleton and Rowley.  A beautiful young 
heiress, about to be given in marriage to a man she loathes, catches the 
nearest, but most fateful way out of her predicament.

 *********

Evening performances begin at 7.30 p.m. 
except Thursdays, when they begin at 8 p.m.

Ticket prices vary from £10 to £18, with discounts for children under 15 
only on Saturday matinees.  Group discounts are also possible.  
Details from the Box Office. 

Box Office no:  0117 902 0344.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION TO 2004 SEASON

The start - Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory began life in Bristol in the Spring, 2000, and gave an opportunity for theatre-goers to see large-cast professional productions in an intimate space.  The initial aims outlined by Andrew Hilton, the Artistic Director, were to include “intelligent, passionate acting, great story-telling, the most lucid and elegant response to Shakespeare’s language - where there will be no attempt to modernise or to simplify”.

Past Productions            
2000 season:            King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
2001 season:            Measure for Measure and Coriolanus
2002 season:            The Winter’s Tale and Twelfth Night
2003 season:            Troilus and Cressida and As You Like It

Reviews, credits and awards - each year the company has received accolades of the highest kind with excellent reviews from the national press; votes of the ‘best 3 to see’ from the Observer; the ‘5 best plays’ from the Independent; the coveted spot of ‘if you’re only going to see one thing this week ...’ from the Guardian; credit and recognition from the Times and the Observer in their end of year round up; to say nothing of the Oscars and Top Bananas from Venue.  In 2001, the company won the ‘Empty Space ..... Peter Brook Award’ for the Best ‘Up and Coming’ Theatre, the first time the award had been given to a company outside of London;  in 2003, Lucy Black received a commendation in the Ian Charleson Award for her role as Olivia in Twelfth Night;  several actors have joined the RSC for whole Shakespeare seasons, and the National Theatre;  many other actors have achieved good roles with high-quality companies.

national reviewers, 2003 - “He and his actors prove, once again, that to be popular, Shakespeare need not be, should not be, overdirected, tricksy or shallow.” - The Sunday Times

“There is never a line in a Hilton production that isn’t crystal clear, a word that you don’t understand.  He makes Shakespeare’s poetry seem easy.” - The Guardian

”..this lucid production, characterised by intelligent performances from all the cast ..” - Independent on Sunday

, “Hilton’s attention to each character is loving, precise and critical, but never clinical: each comes to life, but each has his secrets.  The speaking of this miraculous text, both verse and prose, is excellent; director and actors are attentive to every line.” - The Sunday Times

The company - the company was set up just four years ago with two ambitions - to produce work of the highest quality and to build a commercial operation on the foundations of private investment by theatre enthusiasts.  The aim was to exist for five years producing two classical plays each Spring.  The response by audiences and critics more than credit the first ambition and the investment allowed the company to meet its budget for the first four years.  The company has now become a charity however, and the original ‘founders’ have requested that Andrew Hilton continues to produce his annual offering of plays for a further five years with, maybe, a wider brief.

The sponsors for 2004 are Teoh’s Oriental Bistro and Stage Electrics

Teoh’s Oriental Bistro is committed to serving oriental food at very reasonable prices in the less fashionable areas outside city centres.

Stage Electrics is a leading British supplier of technical services to the entertainment industry, based in the South West.

BOV Theatre School and the Revd Neville Boundy have also generously supported the company this year.

TLT Solicitors and Baker Tilly  are giving generous support ‘in kind’.

The venue - the Tobacco Factory Theatre has achieved a strong national reputation for its varied and accessible programming in its first year as a full-time venue, and is still providing the ‘perfect place’ for Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory.  As a recently established Tobacco Factory Arts Trust, under the directorship of Dan Danson, there could be money available for improvement to the theatre’s facilities.

This Season - this fifth season sees the plays  Macbeth by William Shakespeare and The Changeling by Middleton and Rowley.  Andrew Hilton, the Artistic Director says of his choice of plays this year: “Macbeth is one of the best things Shakespeare wrote and takes you further into the very fundamental thing about being human, the ‘risk’ of being human!  It is not a pessimistic or cynical play - it curiously defines what is beautiful about human life whilst carefully describing its destruction.”  The Changeling was the first play he directed a long time ago and he is still as enthusiastic about it now as he was then.  “It is enormously charged; extremely direct and passionate; very simply about very basic things.  There are also similarities with the two plays, how lives are changed by a deed - they are both existentialist pieces - you are what you do, rather than who you are.

Macbeth will be played by Gyuri Sarossy, who played Coriolanus in the 2001 production of that play; Lady Macbeth by Zoë Aldrich, who played Paulina in the 2002 production of The Winter’s Tale.

In The Changeling, De Flores will be played by Matthew Thomas who is new to the company; Beatrice-Joanna by Saskia Portway, who played Rosalind in last year’s As You Like It.

Later in the Year - the company will be transferring the plays in repertoire for a five week season in the Barbican Pit starting 25th September, 2004.

Andrew Hilton - Biography.

Andrew Hilton, Artistic Director, is an actor of thirty years experience.  He has been a member of the National Theatre Company, played in Repertory in Greenwich, Manchester, York, Cambridge and at the Bristol Old Vic as well as appearing on television in such series as A Very Peculiar Practice, Joint Account, The Politician’s Wife, The Wyvern Mystery, One Foot in the Grave and EastEnders

Andrew was an Associate Director of the Mermaid Theatre in London with Sir Bernard Miles (where he spent a brief period as General Manager) and a Director of Show of Strength (Bristol) from 1989 to 1993.  He has been a freelance teacher and director of Shakespeare at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School since 1992.  He has also recently taught at Bristol University. 

Andrew’s directing in Bristol has included Tales of the Undead, Let’s Do It, Living Quarters, Measure for Measure, Away and Rough Music (all Show of Strength) and Serious Money (BOVTS).  He has directed all the productions that the company Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory have performed since its inauguration in the Spring of 2000.

As Andrew Hilton says “For thirty years or more audiences have demonstrated an appetite for a kind of theatre that established companies have only rarely been able to provide - large-cast, classical drama in intimate spaces.  We are confident of the theatre audience’s enthusiastic support.”  For the last four years they have given it, with audience percentages rising from under 60% in the first year to over 90% last year. 

Box Office number:  0117 902 0344

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