Our heritage

Bashville (1983)

Adapted by David William and Benny Green from the play The Admirable Bashville by George Bernard Shaw. Music by Denis King. Lyrics by Benny Green

Following the success of a straight play version of George Bernard Shaw’s The Admirable Bashville in 1982, David William, Benny Green and composer Denis King created a musical version entitled Bashville for the Open Air Theatre’s 1983 season. This was the first musical to be staged at Regent's Park.
Bashville (1983)

The cast

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Creative team

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Programmes and Marketing

Sets

Misc Images

Reviews

Daily Telegraph

"charming, elegant, stylish and with a layer of wit to add to Shaw's own joke about Elizabethan playwrights as well as blank verse." "an evening of tuneful parody, staged by David William with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek solemnity and acted at a level of burlesque seldom encountered beyond the Players Theatre."

The Times

"this jaunty musical had found its right home in the Open Air Theatre. It has been proved over the years that the shows that thrive best at this address are those that defy the pastoral environment, and Bashville defies it with a vengeance."

Time Out

"Bashville is an escapist's dream, a midsummer night's delicacy wittly adapted by Benny Green from an obscure Bernard Shaw play and laced with pretty music (courtesy of Denis King) which is performed with contagious exuberance by an orchestra decked out in straw boaters on a flower-fringed bandstand."

Awards

Musical of the Year

Olivier Award: Nominated

Actor of the Year in a Musical

Olivier Award: Nominated