Scytheplays Ltd: Bandwidths of Balderdash - plus more Postcodes!

10 Jun 2017

Bandwidths of Balderdash - plus more Postcodes! - for the Greater Manchester Fringe

The Faces At The Window: (L-R) Steve Cain, Richard Barry, Edward Barry, Victoria May and Daniel Thackeray
Photo by Shay Rowan

The Faces At The Window - the popular sketch comedy troupe shepherded by Scytheplays Ltd in partnership with Lilaloka Productions and Hat Hair Productions - are about to return to venues in the North West with their second full-length show, The Bandwidths of Balderdash. The new show debuts as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival, while their first acclaimed effort, Looking at the Lesser Postcodes, is also returning for several performances in the Festival and beyond.

In The Bandwidths of Balderdash, actor/writers Victoria May, Richard Barry, Steve Cain, Edward Barry and Daniel Thackeray, plus writer/director Ross Kelly and full band led by double bassist Joel Roberts, create another unique radio-style comedy sketch show with songs. They invite you to tune in to meet a strangely unsettling set of characters inhabiting our radio waves: listen in on Radio Metaldehyde, hear news reports from 570BC and be soothed by tuneful dispatches about uncles with lengthy catamarans.

Following the Greater Manchester Fringe, both shows will continue to perform at venues around the North West, while the team will be developing and periodically premiering collections of all-new material.

The currently planned performances are below (with booking links). The different shows, while containing some recurring characters, can be enjoyed independently of one another.

The Bandwidths of Balderdash

PREVIEW PERFORMANCE – Gullivers, Oldham St, M4 1LW

Thursday 29^th June (7.30pm)

£5/£4 concs. on the door or via Eventbrite

The King’s Arms Theatre, Bloom St, Salford, M3 6AN

Monday 17^th July (7.30pm)

£8/£7 concs. on the door or via Greater Manchester Fringe

The Box @ The Met Theatre, Market Street, Bury, BL9 0BW

Thurs 20^th Jul 2017 7:30pm
£8/£7.00 concs. on the door or via Greater Manchester Fringe

Looking at the Lesser Postcodes

The King’s Arms Theatre, Bloom St, Salford, M3 6AN

Monday 3^rd July (9pm) and Tuesday 4^th July (7.30pm)

£8/£7 concs. on the door or via Greater Manchester Fringe

Jackson’s Pit, off Barn St, Oldham, OL1

Thursday 17^th August (7.30pm)

£5/£4 concs. on the door or via Eventbrite

The Klondike Club, 1 Burnage Range, Levenshulme, Manchester M19 2HQ

Friday 18^th August (7.30pm)

£5/£4 concs. on the door or via Eventbrite

The poster for The Faces At The Window's upcoming tour,
designed by Victoria May and Daniel Thackeray

About the company

Scytheplays is a theatre company specialising in (but not limited to) the adaptation of literary science fiction for the stage.

Its first production was Kevin Cuffe's original black comedy play, The Say Can Blues, in July 2011, and it then produced an adaptation of the classic 2000AD comic book written by Alan Moore and drawn by Ian Gibson, The Ballad of Halo Jones. Both shows were staged at the Lass O'Gowrie in Manchester and Scytheplays has an on-going relationship with Lass Productions, going on to co-produce a new piece inspired by the true-life meeting between Sir Clive Sinclair and Alan Sugar, Together in Electric Dreams, an adaptation of Nigel Kneale's classic television play The Year of the Sex Olympics, the Leeds revival of Halo Jones, and the highly-acclaimed V for Vendetta and Wine of India. Scytheplays also collaborated with Lass Productions and Yer Maun Productions to co-found the Greater Manchester Horror Fringe Festival, which will be returning in October 2015.

Scytheplays works with a loose (and ever-expanding) pool of acting and production people, being keen to build on and strengthen the bonds within Manchester's creative community, and also to help new talent to emerge. The company's creative director is Daniel Thackeray and associated directors include Ross Kelly and Fi Hudson.

For more information please contact Daniel via guiltedge@hotmail.com or find us on Twitter (@ScytheplaysLtd). Proposals for new productions are encouraged, but we ask that any writers wishing to submit scripts send an enquiry e-mail in the first instance to ask if we are currently reading script submissions (as our reading team is small). Please be aware that the company aims in the main to produce plays that are either adapted from the science-fiction or fantasy of other media (literature/comics/TV), or original works that are concerned with real science and its history.

Scytheplays Ltd is a limited company, Companies House registration number 09041817.