What’s On

ON SALE SOON

Director: Jean-Marie Poiré

While searching for the sacred jewels, Knight Godefroy and his squire are accidentally transported to contemporary times by a senile sorcerer. Godefroy enlists the aid of his descendants to try to find a way to return back to where he came from, all the while trying to contend with the cultural and technological differences between his time of 1023 and the late 20th century.

César Awards 1994: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor

1993, colour 107mins (comedy/fantasy)

ON SALE SOON

1964 (U) – colour 91 mins (drama/musical/romance)

Jaques Demy

French with English subtitles

This is the story of 16-year-old Geneviève and 20-year-old Guy who are very much in love. Her kind mother won’t hear of her marrying, particularly as Guy has yet to complete his military service. Geneviève is heartbroken when he leaves for army service in colonial Algeria and is upset to have only received one letter from him in two months. She is also pregnant. Her mother’s solution to this situation is kindly diamond-merchant Roland Cassard. He agrees to raise Geneviève’s child as his own, and when Guy returns from Algeria he finds Geneviève now married.

Prix Louis-Delluc 1963, Cannes 1964: Palme d’Or
French Syndicate of Film Critics 1965: Critics Prize – Best Film

CHINESE BOXING

A NEW ONE-MAN PLAY BY MARK KITTO

Will China and the West ever understand each other? Sir Claude MacDonald, formerly Her Majesty’s Minister Plenipotentiary to Peking, does his best to resolve the issue.

‘Chinese Boxing’ is a topical and entertaining one-man show with a powerful message about China and ‘The West’, inspired by the Siege of the Legations (diplomatic quarter) in Peking, during the Boxer Uprising of 1900. The foreign diplomats held out for 55 days until relieved by an international force. Sir Claude commanded the defence.

In 1912 Sir Claude gives an illustrated talk to the Malvern branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. He describes his work in China and the origins of the Boxer Uprising. As he reaches a critical point in the siege the scene shifts to an antechamber in the Imperial Palace in Peking in 1900. The battle is raging a few hundred yards away. General Ronglu, commander of imperial forces, waits to report to the Empress Dowager. He assumes the audience is a foreign delegation. He gives his side of the story. It is not straightforward. He breaks off when the allied relief force batters on the gates of Peking. Pandemonium. Panic. Sir Claude is absent. Someone must step forward, calm the audience and conclude the story.

70 mins, no interval.

The performance will be followed by a Q and A on relations between China and the West. Besides a playwright and actor, Mark Kitto is a respected China pundit, author of the books ‘China Cuckoo’ and ‘That’s China’. He contributed a long-running China column to Prospect Magazine.

Praise for Chinese Boxing

‘A stimulating and original show,’ Jonathan Freedland, Guardian and Radio 4

‘Brilliantly conceived and acted… thought-provoking, sad, funny, and culturally and politically relevant today,’ Susan Crook, TV exec producer and author

‘Historically fascinating and beautifully written,’ David Haig, actor and writer

BOOKING INFORMATION: Tickets are sold socially distanced and staggered, however capacity may increase following Government guidelines.

Mistral Productions

It is often difficult to believe that many historical figures were not what they seemed behind their façade of fame and respectability.  Yet the man whose works earned him a reputation as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era hid the bleak reality of an increasingly strained and unhappy union to Catherine Hogarth, seperating from her after 22 years, considering her to have become mentally disordered and an unfit mother.  On her deathbed in 1879, she handed a collection of letters to her daughter Kate “so that the world may know that he loved me once”.  These precious documents became the subject of this absorbing presentation.