A brave play on love and lust (From Gazette Series)

A brave play on love and lust

A CONTROVERSIAL play is about to hit the Everyman Theatre's Other Space in Cheltenham.

Mompesson's Well, by Simon Andrew Sterling, is an original, wickedly funny and thought-provoking drama about memory, identity, dreams and reality.

Kayelle Productions, the Worcestershire-based theatre company, presents the show fromTuesday, February 21 to Saturday, February 25.

The company was last seen in Gloucestershire with its sell-out show 'Wayward Women'.

Award-winning writer Simon Andrew Sterling's credits include The Bill, Casualty and Soldier Soldier.

This new brilliant and original three-hander looks at Will Mompesson's lack of memory - this presents a challenge to Jack, a psychiatrist determined to find out what happened during a mysterious epidemic. Only Tom, a young and inexperienced nurse, seems to hold the key to unlocking Will's memories. But is Will deliberately avoiding his own past, and is the psychiatrist even who he claims to be?

Mompesson's Well is a multi-layered comedy of twists and turns with a shatteringly powerful ending.

Mike Henley (Judge John Deed, Afterlife, Casualty, Nighty Night) takes on the role of irascible Will Mompesson, and newcomer Polly Harrison plays the impressionable Tom. In addition to directing, Lynn Davies appears as Jack.

Stirling explained that the comedy-drama was inspired as much by the last days of his father-in-law as by the famous plague village in Derbyshire that gave him the title.

He said: "I was interested in a quirky comedy about memory and identity, but when my father-in-law was dying I became more and more intrigued by what he was going through - not the pain so much as the confusion.

"The play presents the dignity and the absurdity of a man in that position - it also presents a man who has no need to be politically correct and can speak his mind. "But it's the relationship between Mompesson and the young nurse who is caring for him that is the heart of the play - she reminds him of the other women in his life."

Producer Kim Davies said: "The play certainly gets people talking - about their own experience of relatives growing old and dying, old flames and relationships from the past, how we care for the infirm ... and what men really think.

"To have so many big issues bouncing around in a play that's so funny, so human and so touching is amazing."

She added: "It's a very brave script that Simon has come up with- brave because it takes the bull by the horns.

"It is about death and dying, the loss of memory and identity and it is about suffering, trauma and pain.

"But maybe more than that, it's about love - love, lust and longing."

Tickets are available from the box office or by visiting www.everymantheatre.org.uk