Storm in a Flower Vase and Dickens Abridged for runs at the West End's Arts Theatre

It has been announced that Storm in a Flower Vase and Dickens Abridged will both receive runs at the West End's Arts Theatre later this year. 

Alan Strachan directs Anton Burge’s Storm in a Flower Vase, a vivid portrait of the iconic floral designer Constance Spry. Enigmatic and eccentric, Spry is best known as a society florist and best-selling cookery writer who popularised a do-it-yourself approach to home-making in mid 20th Century Britain. 

Anton Burge’s new play is a sensitive look at this pioneering spirit who, behind the flamboyant glamour associated with names such as Cecil Beaton and Syrie Maugham, was a complex and unconventional woman with a life of marital discord, affairs and heartache. Storm in a Flower Vase takes its inspiration from The Surprising life of Constance Spry by Sue Shepherd (published by Pan Books).

Penny Downie plays Constance and is joined in the cast by Carolyn Backhouse as Gluck, Sally George as Val Pirie, Sheila Ruskin as Rosemary, Carol Royle as Syrie and Christopher Ravenscroft as Shav. Storm in a Flower Vase opens on Friday 20th September 2013 (previews from 13th September) and runs until Saturday 12th October 2013.

From the co-creator of The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged), Dickens Abridged  a fast-paced musical comedy, will open in the West End for a limited Christmas Season at The Arts Theatre from 2nd December 2013 (previews from 27th November) until Sunday 5th January 2014. 

A high-speed comic sprint through Dickens' Greatest Hits, Dickens Abridged sees an absurdly talented cast of five Charles Dickens devotees bring hundreds of the great author’s best-loved characters to life in 90 minutes of madcap Dickensian mayhem. 

From Great Expectations complete with flaming bride, to A Christmas Carol in which Tiny Tim rocks the house with a soaring electric guitar solo, Dickens Abridged will take you on a hilarious ride through the thrills and spills of some of Charlie’s greatest works including David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

Dickens Abridged also reveals some fascinating and bizarre-but-true stories from Charles Dickens' own life, including his complicated romantic entanglements and his inexplicable enthusiasm for performing the bludgeoning scene from Oliver Twist, over and over and over again.

Visit www.artstheatrewestend.co.uk for further information and tickets

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