Productions
Upcoming Productions
March 2024
Cast and Creative Team
Jaki McCarrick - Playwright
Caroline Strange - Judith Noone
Jessy Heath - Sarah Jane Wylie
Natasha Ravenscroft - Hannah Gibney
Meghan Reid - Ellen Clarke
Eve Niker - Molly Durcan
Rosie Thorpe - ETD Artistic Director / Producer
Ilya Parenteau - ETD Co-Artistic Director / Director
Olivia Woodrow – Co-Producer
Bevan Thomson - Stage Manager/Fight Choreographer
Liz Manning – Costume Designer
Miriam Möller-Wieland - Set Designer
The year is 1850, Belfast, Ireland. Two hundred women are departing on a ship bound for Australia under the Earl Grey Orphan Emigration Scheme. Escaping workhouses overpopulated during the Great Famine, they are set to become “mistresses of their own destiny” as servants, farm-workers – and, indeed, wives – in the Colonies. BELFAST GIRLS by Irish playwright, Jaki McCarrick, focuses on five of the most “notorious and riotous” of these women and their three month journey in the bowels of the Inchinnan ship. For some the voyage offers a fresh start, but others find they cannot escape the memory of the lives they've left behind.
Past Productions
EDUCATING RITA by Willy Russell - October 2022
EDUCATING RITA follows the relationship between Rita, a young working-class hairdresser from Liverpool and Dr. Frank Bryant, a middle-aged University lecturer, during the course of a year.
Brash, straight-talking Rita bursts into University night classes determined to change her life. Her tutor Frank is a jaded lecturer, a failed poet and a self-acknowledged ‘appalling teacher of appalling students’ who has just about given up. In need of some extra cash, he agrees to tutor Rita, totally unaware of the whirlwind that’s about to enter his world….
Director - Ilya Parenteau Costume - Liz Manning
Rita - Rosie Thorpe Frank - Mike McAlpine
SHAKESPEARE AM RHEIN - ROMEO & JULIET - June 2022
"Looking around the world today, we can still see the effects of learned and unfounded hatred. Despite this, countless groups and individuals continue to prove and advocate for the idea that this can be overcome. We believe that the story of ROMEO & JULIET, where hate is threatened by love, remains relevant as as reflection of both global and personal conflict.
This production of ROMEO & JULIET will tell the love story of two young women in the midst of a war. The Kaiserpfalz Ruins, a place of real historical violence, brings its own memory and magic to the stage as the venue for this play. We are excited for audiences, locals and visitors, to experience the Düsseldorf landmark in a new and dramatic spectacle, for a summer evening of 'Shakespeare am Rhein'."
Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page for the full cast and creative team.
BEAT THE DEVIL by David Hare - January 2022
In cooperation with the Theatermuseum der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf and their current exhibition, "Erinnerungsgeister uns Hoffnungslichter"
"On the same day that the UK government finally made the first of two decisive interventions that led to a conspicuously late lockdown, David Hare (the playwright) contracted Covid-19. Nobody seemed to know much about it then, and many doctors are not altogether sure they know much more today. Suffering a pageant of apparently random symptoms, Hare recalls the delirium of his illness, which mixed with fear, dream, honest medicine and dishonest politics create a monologue of furious urgency and power."
Performed by Tom Zahner | Directed by Ilya Parenteau
THE MESSIAH by Patrick Barlow - December 2021
English Theatre Düsseldorf presents, in cooperation with Düsseldorf Lyric Opera, the rip roaring British Christmas comedy, THE MESSIAH by Patrick Barlow (in englischer Sprache)
""Just in time for Christmas, this zany and hilarious satire first performed at the Tricycle Theatre, London in 1983, Patrick Barlow's The Messiah, is a rib-tickling, farcical re-enactment of the greatest story ever told. The entire company of two, led by "distinguished historian and thespian", artistic director, Jeffrey Thespus Wimpole, (Mike McAlpine) and his complete ensemble, the incompetent, er, valiant assistant, Humphrey Dott, (Tom Zahner) bring us their version of the entire Christmas story, with the help of "diva" Opera singer, Mrs Thomas, (Phillipa Thomas) including all of the best-loved characters, Joseph, Mary, and Archangel Gabriel, Herod, God and many more.""
Jeffrey Thespus Wimpole - Mike McAlpine
Humphrey Dott - Tom Zahner
Mrs Thomas - Phillipa Thomas
Director - Tony Dunham
Costume - Liz Manning
BREADCRUMBS by Jennifer Haley - Feb 2020
"A reclusive fiction writer diagnosed with dementia must depend upon a troubled young caretaker to complete her autobiography. In a symbiotic battle of wills, they delve into the dark woods of the past, unearthing a tragedy that shatters their notions of language, loneliness, and essential self."
Director - Samantha Ward
Alida - Ilya Parenteau
Beth/Mother - Rosie Thorpe
Set Design - Angela Lorenz
Costume - Emily Rosenberg
Film Production / postproduction - Alexander Lorenz and Mindnapped GmbH
This project was sponsored by das Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf
Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL - December 2019
Guest show presented by Neil McGarry, produced by ETD.
It was the night before Christmas...19th century wintery Victorian London. "Bah humbug!" rumbles the gloomy businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge, as his writer, Bob Cratchit, asks him for a day off for Christmas. Scrooge has no time for celebrating. When he leaves, it is only to count money in his cold apartment. That is all he asks of life. Until, on the night before Christmas, the ghost of Marley, his late partner in business, appears to him. The ghost announces the visit of three more ghosts who will take the misanthropist Scrooge into his Christmas past, present and future: a macabre lesson that will not fail to have an effect...
Performance - Neil McGarry
Mike & Aydin's NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE - Nov/Dec 2019
Guest show presented by Mike & Aydin, produced by ETD.
Award-winning Germany-based, cutting-edge comedy duo Mike McAlpine and Aydin Isik wrote and perform this fast-paced Cabaret-style play, with which they first appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2015.
They adapt the usual British idea of the North-South divide (London and the South-East versus the rest of us!) to a European setting.
A Brit and a Turk, a dissimilar pairing, playfully discuss the pros and cons of a modern Europe with all its clichés, prejudices and political incorrectness. Aydin's homeland wants in, Mike's wants out. Two opposites forming the perfect backdrop for a rip-roaring comedy.
Actor - Mike McAlpine
Actor - Aydin Isik
Agatha Christie's THE MOUSETRAP - Oct/Nov 2019
A group of strangers is stranded in a boarding house during a snow storm, one of whom is a murderer. The suspects include the newly married couple who run the house, and the suspicions in their minds nearly wreck their perfect marriage. Others are a spinster with a curious background, an architect who seems better equipped to be a chef, a retired Army major, a strange little man who claims his car has overturned in a drift, and a jurist who makes life miserable for everyone. Into their midst comes a policeman, traveling on skis. He no sooner arrives, when the jurist is killed. Two down, and one to go. To get to the rationale of the murderer's pattern, the policeman probes the background of everyone present, and rattles a lot of skeletons....!
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Mollie Ralston - Rosie Thorpe
Giles Ralston - Mike McAlpine
Sergeant Trotter - Devon Nickel
Christopher Wren - James M.Atkins
Miss Casewell - Anaïs Dahl
Mr Paravicini - Tom Zahner
Mrs Boyle - Sue Bonney-Cox
Major Metcalf - Roger Reade
Voice on the Radio - Tony Dunham
Stage Manager - Claudia Agster
Costume - Liz Manning
Marketing - Erika Levy
Edward Albee's THE ZOO STORY - March 2019
Peter, an average American, to escape his wife, two daughters and two parakeets sits on a bench in Central Park, reading and thinking. He is confronted by Jerry, a lonely man from the wrong side of the park, who tries to teach Peter the realities of life which Peter has tried to ignore. Through a serious of failed conversations and misinterpretations, Jerry begins an experiment to see if middle class Americans are animals after all....
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Jerry - Oleg Karpenko
Peter - Tom Zahner
Set Design - Angela Lorenz
Costume - Liz Manning
THE ODD COUPLE by Neil Simon - December 2018 / January 2019
This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assemble for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. And if the mess is any indication, it's no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger, who has just been separated from his wife. Fastidious, depressed, and none too tense, Felix seems suicidal, but as the action unfolds, Oscar becomes the one with murder on his mind when the clean freak and the slob ultimately decide to room together with hilarious results as The Odd Couple is born!
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Oscar Madison - Tom Zahner
Felix Ungar - Mike McAlpine
Speed - Japheth Myers
Murray - Malcolm Giles
Roy - James Bunyon
Vinnie - James M. Atkins
Gwendolyn Pigeon - Lara Schitto
Cecily Pigeon - Rosie Thorpe
Costume - Liz Manning
THE CHESS PLAYER by Richard McElvain - September 2018
Guest show presented by Richard McElvain, produced by ETD.
The Chess Player is based on the novella, “Schachnovelle” by Austrian author Stefan Zweig. It tells the story of a Viennese Jewish lawyer, Dr. B, imprisoned by the Nazis. Because his legal practice was in financial management for Austrian "old money", they are sure he "knows" things they want to find out, so instead of sending him to the death camps, they keep him in solitary confinement to break him down. Gradually descending into madness, he steals a book of famous chess games and staves off insanity by escaping into the games.
Beyond the story of survival, the production has a larger, meta-theatre frame in which Richard explores the idea of how life parallels the action of the play. How, like the doctor in solitary survives by entering an illusion, so do we in our lives reach out to illusions to guide us...like Theatre.
Richard performed the show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year and it received 5* STAR reviews!
…an absolute must see not only for entertainment purposes, but as a necessary piece of theatre. Broadway Baby *****
SOME GIRL(S) by Neil LaBute - April 2018
Your Career as a writer is blossoming, your beautiful, young fiancée is waiting to get married and rush off to Cancun by your side, so what is your natural reaction? Well if you’re a man, it’s probably to get nervous and start calling up old girlfriends.
And so begins a single man’s odyssey through four hotel rooms as he flies across the United States in search of the perfect woman (that he’s already broken up with!)
By turns humorous and serious, this portrait of the artist as a young seducer casts a truthful, hilarious light on a typical American male as he wanders through the heart of darkness that is himself…
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Man - Jan Frede
Sam - Rosie Thorpe
Tyler - Lara Schitto
Lindsay - Cigdem Spickermann
Bobbi - Priscilla Taylor
Costume - Liz Manning
Set Design - Miriam Möller
EDUCATING RITA by Willy Russell - January & March 2018
EDUCATING RITA follows the relationship between Rita, a young working-class hairdresser from Liverpool and Dr. Frank Bryant, a middle-aged University lecturer, during the course of a year.
Brash, straight-talking Rita bursts into University night classes determined to change her life. Her tutor Frank is a jaded lecturer, a failed poet and a self-acknowledged ‘appalling teacher of appalling students’ who has just about given up. In need of some extra cash, he agrees to tutor Rita, totally unaware of the whirlwind that’s about to enter his world….
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Rita - Rosie Thorpe
Frank - Mike McAlpine
Costume - Liz Manning