GREENWICH THEATRE AUTUMN SEASON

As the arts face a battle for their very survival, Greenwich Theatre has defiantly launched an autumn season of live performances to keep up our spirits and give us a welcome cultural boost.

Current Covid-19 regulations restrict numbers in the main auditorium, studio space and café/bar, cut cash transactions to a bare minimum, require visitors to wear face coverings in the building and rule out productions with large casts..

But despite the constraints, the theatre has managed to put together a fascinatingly broad selection of shows to take us up to Christmas.

TV antiques and history expert David Harper presents A Romp With The Georgians in which he offers his unique take on an age of amazing discoveries and inventions – but also a time of corruption, disease and social deprivation when a man could sell his wife for the price of a pot of gin.

Award-winning stand-up Juliette Burton uses her new show, Defined, to take a timely, uncompromising yet funny look at how we label ourselves.

The theatre will be screening FW Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu – the film that invented the vampire movie genre – with a new score played live by composer Chris Green.

God Bless The Child is a celebration of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday by Katrina Beckford, who will be accompanied by pianist Matt Randal. Was there ever a greater or more chilling recording than Lady Day’s haunting version of Strange Fruit?

Comedian Richard Stott’s show Right Hand Man takes a wry look at the taboos and stigmas that still – depressingly – exist around mental health and disability.

And there’s more razor-sharp wit in Peter Gill’s The Songs Of Tom Lehrer which draws on more than six decades of the American satirist’s creations such as Smut and Poisoning Pigeons In The Park.

As we all already know, Andrew Pollard’s Christmas panto The Queen Of Hearts has had to be put back to the spring because of the pandemic - but Greenwich Theatre will still be offering festive fun for all the family.

Artistic director James Haddrell will be staging a musical version of the literary classic The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase - which will also offer youngsters the chance to interact with the cast online - European Arts Company return with their brilliant production of A Christmas Carol and there are jokes, sketches and games galore in Comedy Clubs 4 Kids.

For full details of the shows and all the latest news on government Covid-19 guidelines, go to https://greenwichtheatre.org.uk/whats-on/