PACK OF LIES      28 -30 November 2024

 

This drama is the true story of a solidly middle class family innocently caught up in an international spy scandal involving Russia and the Royal Navy. 

Is anyone as they seem?  Find out what happened when the Jacksons befriended the Krogers right across the road......

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​CAST:

 

BARBARA – Lynne McCaffrey

BOB – Felix Byrne

JULIE – Poppy Foot

HELEN – Kirstin West

PETER – John Fletcher

STEWART – Allan Schonfeld

THELMA – Liz Hollis

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PACK OF LIES, originally performed in the West End starring Dame Judi Dench and her husband Michael Williams and made into an Emmy Award nominated film featuring Ellen Burstyn and Alan Bates – is well under way. After a summer of line-learning, the talented cast are polishing up their performances and bringing their characters to life. The play is based on the true story of international espionage and betrayal involving Russia and the Royal Navy.  Some  may well remember the Portland Spy Ring scandal of the 1960s and the capture of Gordon Lonsdale and his associates. Now learn how it affected an ordinary middle-class family who simply befriended their neighbours across the road – and got caught up in the middle. Will they ever trust anyone again....?

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STRIKING THE SET

 

 

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MEET THE DIRECTOR - SIMON WELCH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simon Welch is a relatively new member of the Holt Players. But in the two years since he joined, he has been very active both onstage and behind. Having moved to Trowbridge in June 2022 from Cyprus, he was cast as the irascible and snobbish squire David Horton in our sell-out production of The Vicar of Dibley that November. Then the following spring he led the team putting on the psychological thriller Trap for a Lonely Man – a play he says he has always wanted to direct ever since he first saw it in Nottingham almost 40 years ago. That production was one of the two that last year were instrumental in the Holt Players being awarded the coveted regional District Award from NODA (National Operatic and Dramatic association).

 

Now he is directing the thought-provoking Pack of Lies – the true international espionage story the follows an ordinary middle-aged couple caught up in the scandal - another play he has waited over three decades to have the chance to direct. “What has held me back,” he says, “is the need to have really strong actors in all the roles. I’m thrilled to have found a terrific cast, both among Holt Players stalwarts and new members from outside the Group, and admire both their skill and dedication.”

 

 Simon, 67, and originally from Chingford, Essex, has been involved with drama all his adult life, despite a somewhat peripatetic existence that took him not only around the South of England and the Midlands, but also abroad to Chiang Mai in Thailand for over five years, and Paphos, Cyprus for almost seven. Indeed, he met his wife Joan - another keen thespian – in an amateur dramatic society in South Lincolnshire, where he was living at the time.

 

Wherever they were in the world, there was always a drama group to join.’ I’m a jack of all trades’, he says with a grin, ’happy to turn my hand to anything on stage and backstage. Though I do draw the line at singing..... I just love being part of a team’.

 

Favourite plays you have performed? ‘Jeffrey Barnard is Unwell, by Keith Waterhouse was a great one to be in. As was Alan Bennett’s Lady in a Van, which was so well written.  Another favourite was playing Snug/Lion/Fairy In Midsummer Night’s Dream which involved wearing wings and a tutu – don’t ask! – but perhaps my most unusual role was Grandpa Joe in a ballet school adaptation of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – in Thailand. 

 

Clearly, newcomer Simon Welch is already giving a great deal to the Holt Players – particularly now that he has been elected to the organising Committee too.

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