Retracing the Steps

In 2002 David Shuker was already a budding actor who had significant roles to his name (such as Marlow in 'She Stoops to Conquer' at Shrewsbury Castle), when his parents gave him a local newspaper with an article they thought might interest him. Theatre on the Steps urgently needed someone to play the part of Ernest in Oscar Wilde's classic comedy. With barely four weeks to go he was cast and had great fun eating the muffins and cucumber sandwiches. Thirteen years later he is eagerly anticipating a return to the 'lovely theatre' in a new drama from Shrewsbury-based Dogpole Drama Company. The play is 'Yvette' by Paul Higgins, an adaptation of the novella by Guy de Maupassant. Since his first appearance at Bridgnorth, David has been busy pursuing his acting career, with roles at the RSC in Douglas Coupland's 'September 10, 2001', and Adrian Schiller's 'Doctor Foster', a comedy musical of Faustus, as well as appearing as a 'dead Hamlet' in the RSC's first ever commissioned film short. He has worked at the Old Vic and for RADA. He has also been on TV in a sketch for the Graham Norton show, as one of three men being set up on a blind date with Dawn French! One of David's favourites roles was Voss in 'Ritter, Dene, Voss', Thomas Bernhard's psychosexual comedy about Ludwig Wittgenstein. It's not clear, though, whether he enjoyed this play because of the text - it has no punctuation, leaving decisions for the actors about pace and expression - or because he had to eat 10 chocolate profiteroles a night! He has toured schools with Theatre in Education projects, done the Edinburgh Festival and appeared in Camden in the extreme horror, shock theatre genre of Grand Guignol plays. People fainted and sometimes walked out. (It's always satisfying for actors to get a strong audience reaction!) One of his most recent roles was in a sell-out and well-received production of an earlier play by Higgins, 'The Peacock's Feathers', and so he is very excited to appear in the world premiere of this writer's new drama of love and money in 19th Century Paris. Yvette is a young girl who has just left a convent. Her mother, the Marquise Obardi, runs a gambling house and bordello. What happens when Yvette and the Marquise are pursued by Saval and Servigny, two playboy bachelors? Theatre on the Steps is the space for this kind of drama because it has the intimacy to show characters in close up. And since it's a new play, with new lines and a new story - the original being drastically altered - it's certain that the audience problem David had in his first Theatre on the Steps show of a man shouting out all the lines each night ('A handbag?') will not be repeated. Yvette tours Shropshire in late November and early December and comes to Theatre on the Steps, Bridgnorth on 26th November. Tickets are available from the Box Office on 01746 766477. For more information go to https://www.facebook.com/YvettePlay?fref=ts.

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