The Old Devils by Robin Hawdon

the old devils play by robin hawdon

The Old Devils stage adaptation by Robin Hawdon of what is arguably Kingsley Amis’s finest and most entertaining novel, which won the Booker Prize in 1986.

A celebrity TV commentator and his beautiful wife return to their home town in South Wales after a long absence and meet up with all their old associates and their spouses. They both stir up long forgotten feelings of comradeship, animosity, romance, rivalry, passion, resentment, and longing.

And when the star takes the old devils away from their wives on a marathon pub crawl around the watering holes of Wales to recapture their long lost youth, the tensions and disruptions reach a climax both tragic and hilarious. An epic unfolding of Amis’s vision of the human condition, first produced at Theatre Clwyd in Wales for a national tour, and subsequently in America.

Cast

  • Alun Weaver
  • Rhiannon Weaver
  • Malcolm Cellan-Davies
  • Gwen Cellan-Davies
  • Charlie Norris
  • Sophie Norris
  • Peter Thomas
  • Muriel Thomas
  • Rosemary Weaver
  • Garth Pumphrey
  • Angharad Pumphrey
  •  
  • (doubled, one actor)
  • Various Barmen
  • Reporter
  • Waiter
  • William Thomas

Setting

The action takes place in and around a large town in South Wales. The setting has to accommodate a number of locations: various living rooms and kitchens, pubs, bars, restaurants, and one or two exterior locations. However certain pieces of furniture are common to most of the interiors, in particular tables and chairs and other, more casual seating, such as sofas.

Also frequently a bar counter. The set therefore should be extremely flexible, providing various acting areas which use common furniture, defined mainly by lighting effects, and between which the action can flow as fluently as possible.