Vintage Corrie

VINTAGE Coronation Street episodes will be staged as part of Lass Fest 2013 at the Lass O'Gowrie, Manchester, but this time the action has moved to the 1970s.
With the kind permission of ITV Granada, the action will include iconic characters such as Bet Lynch, Fred Gee, Betty Turpin, Eddie Yates, Hilda and Stan Ogden, Mavis, Rita, Deirdre, Ken Barlow, Mike Baldwin and Gail.

Former Coronation Street casting director June West is again using her inside knowledge to sign up a stella cast, that will again include more familiar faces from the small screen.
Not only did Coronation Street 1968 sell out in January 2012 it also attracted many of the current cast in the audience - including Michelle Collins, Chris Gascoigne and Jennie MacAlpine.
Even Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey tweeted about Coronation 1968 and Maureen Lipman was moved to tears watching the episodes written by her late husband Jack Rosenthal.

Louise Jameson, who played Dr Who companion Leela, will be starring in her award-winning play My Gay Best Friend to the Lass on Saturday 5 January.
Sean Mason has created a stage play from the Alan Moore sci-fi comic book classic story V For Vendetta, about a shadowy freedom fighter using terrorist tactics against a totalitarian state.
V For Vendetta runs January 8-10  and will be part of a double bill with one of the hits of the last Lassfest, The Ballad Of Halo Jones on the 27th January.
Salford based award winning writer Ian Winterton is adapting American Werewolf in London (January 13-15) and the classic 1987 black comedy Withnail and I (January 20-22). 
Using the ground floor of the pub, the audience will be immersed in the action and urged to stay on the path and off the moors!
Someone Who'll Watch Over Me by Irish dramatist Frank McGuinness, (January 17-19) is a fiction but based on the story of John McCarthy, Terry Waite and Brian Keenan when they were held hostage in Beirut.

The play has touches of Samuel Becket style absurdity as the audience tries to distinguish between the characters' insanity and humour.
It has been a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic, scooping awards and attracting a star-studded cast including Jonny Lee Miller, Aiden Gillen and David Threlfall (Frank Gallagher in Shameless)
Strangers In Space (January 26 - 28) is a brand new play from Keith Temple, who has written extensively for EastEnders, Byker Grove, Casualty and Dr Who.
Keith has been a regular at Doctor Who conventions, having written Planet of the Ood for David Tennant's Doctor in the TV series, and draws on his own experiences to tell a blackly comic tale of a star, and extra and an excitable fan trapped in a lift at a sci-fi convention.

Sci-fi classic Blade Runner is being adapted by Brian Gorman for the Lass, January 30 - February 2. Blade Runner, based on the screenplay of the 1982 feature film, Blade Runner will see Ridley Scott's cult sci-fi movie adapted for the intimate setting of The Lass O'Gowrie.
The play will expand on the themes of the film, and incorporate material from earlier screenplays, deleted scenes from the film, and original material (by Brian Gorman) that will seek to explore the characters and situations created by screenwriters Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, and the original novel ('Do Androids dream Of Electric Sheep?') by Philip K Dick.
Gorman has written this stage adaptation with the aim of engaging audiences who may never have seen the film, whilst also attracting fans of the film by presenting beloved characters and scenes in a fresh light.
 
Lassfest is still open to submissions of new work by local writers. For more details of this and all the shows visit our website  www.thelass.co.uk.

Published: 22-Nov-2012: (1627)