The Feast During the Plague
Clod Ensemble’s first ever production – a musical adaptation of Alexander Pushkin’s ‘little tragedy’ for seven actors and seven musicians.
In the midst of a terrible plague a group of friends gather in an attempt to celebrate life. Led by an ebullient ‘Master of the Revels’, the villagers surreptitiously try to have a party…
Written in 1830 and published in 1832 as one of four Little Tragedies, Pushkin wrote The Feast During the Plague when he was in quarantine during a cholera epidemic. It is based on City of the Plague, an 1816 play by Scottish writer John Wilson, which depicts a society living perpetually under the stress of disease.
After the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic in Spring 2020 we returned to this production to deliver The Feast During the Plague [REDUX 2020]. The reimagined programme of work formed part of the company’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations.
Performers: Alison Jones; Conor Lovett; Gabriella Epstein; Giovanni Fusetti; Jason Thorpe; Leisa Mererid; Nick Cohen; Sabina Netherclift; Vanessa Earl
Musicians: Calina de la Mare or Tim Myall - Violin; Ann Child or Sophie Sirota - Viola; Ruth Caldwell or Nick Allen - Cello; James Keane - Conductor; Catherine Allen or Dave Ledingham - Clarinet/Bass Clarinet; Nick Stevenson - Flute/Saxophone; John-Paul Gandy or Graham Slack - Piano
Battersea Arts Centre, London
1995
“brilliantly intense, funny, thrilling theatre which defies simple classification”
The Stage
“A strikingly complex work brought to exuberant life by a cast of eight and a six-piece band [...] an impressive production fuelled by a smouldering mass of robustly-observed, often comic detail.”
Time Out
“A promising debut from a young company who might be cloddish by name but never by nature.”
Time Out
Arts Council England
