A brand new adaptation of The Arabian Nights, interweaving half a dozen of the most comical, sinister, smutty, absurd and terrifying of the tales of Shahrazad, into one barnstorming piece full of eastern promise. This play was first created for an ensemble cast - where a number of performers take many different roles. The original production involved around 25 actors filling the 100 or so named parts, although it would be possible to perform the entire thing with fewer people. At the opposite end of the scale, the beauty of this play is that it is possible to involve as many people as you want, since there is a wide variety of sizes of role, and endless opportunities for crowd scenes.

To link the tales, the frame story of Shahryar and Shaharazad relates how the storyteller, Shaharazad, has to keep her murderous husband enthralled in order to forestall her decapitation the following dawn. The tales we hear related are:  Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - one of the best known tales from The Nights, the ingredients will be familiar to most people through pantomime, although this dramatisation strips the tale back to its savage origins. It’s also very funny however. The Tale of the Speaking Head is a more profound proposition - a macabre and moral tale which concludes with a very neat twist. The Tale of The Simpleton and The Two Sharpers is a classic ‘noodle story’ – one man’s gullible idiocy (involving a donkey) providing richly comic entertainment. The Tale of the Little Hunchback is played in a vernacular style which suits the jovial black humour of this very tall tale. The Tale of How Abu Hassan Broke Wind is a great shaggy dog joke, interpolated within the story of the Little Hunchback. The Tale of the Lady and her Four Suitors concerns important men thinking with their libidos instead of their brains, and really does prove there is nothing new under the sun – its dénouement is the purest farce, dating to several hundred years before the hey-day of Georges Feydeau, Brian Rix et al. The Strange Tale of Sidi Nu’uman is quite a horror story concerning fiends and cannibalism - although it does possess a comic sub-plot involving the main protagonist’s brief career as a stray dog (huge potential here for a comic actor to steal the show with all manner of doggy business!)

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