Other Work
Other published Ken Hill plays include The Curse of the Werewolf, The Mummy's Tomb and The Invisible Man - which was one of the four nominees in the 1992/93 Oliver Awards Best Entertainment category. This page gives you an introduction to each.
A PLAY by KEN HILL
SONGS by IAN ARMIT and KEN HILL
"One must believe in werewolves, one must believe in
the people and one must care what happens to them."
THE STRATFORD EAST CAST:
(in order of appearance)
The Old Baron ... Steven Pacey
Pastor Schneidhuber ... Tyler Butterworth
D'Arcy ... Robin Nedwell
Mrs Bancroft ... Judith Bruce
Dr Bancroft ... Reginald Marsh
Kitty ... Diana Morrison
Ramsey ... Tyler Butterworth
Ingeborg ... Toni Palmer
Professor Steiner ... Terrence Hardiman
Inspector Kruger ... Bogdan Kominowski
Martin Von Heilmann ... Steven Pacey
Frau Gessler ... Toni Palmer
Ernst The Hunter ... Tyler Butterworth
Other parts played by members of the company.
THE CREATIVE CREDITS:
Director ... Ken Hill
Assistant Director ... Peter Rankin
Musical Director ... Alasdair MacNeill
Set Designer ... Sarah-Jane McClelland
Lighting Designer ... Gerry Jenkinson
Costume Designer ... Megan Baker
Choreographer ... Lindsay Dolan
Review for "THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF" - UK Newspaper
Opened 5 February, 1994
"Expectations for bestiality and foul play are amply met in Ken Hill's entertaining 'monster musical' which follows comic strip adventures of an Edwardian family - the witlessly xenophobic Bancrofts - on holiday in a far flung corner of the Black Forest. With so much swirling swamp mist infecting Sarah-Jane McClelland's magnificent ghostly castle, and gutted, desecrated chapel, it's almost inevitable that the locals will have a touch of lycanthropy about the chops. As Professor Steiner, the host and sinister old college chum of Dr Bancroft observes, "It is ze volf season here." In fact it's always the wolf season here. In the course of getting lost, stumbling over savaged bodies and escaping mutating werewolves, the Bancrofts encounter the Professor's less successful experiments: the insane, moon-touched Ramsey (Tyler Butterworth) who loves his raw rabbit; and Toni Palmer's gutteral Frau Gessier who waves a bloody stump where her paw should be.
Hill's production has few pretensions to musical immortality - the musc hall style songs and dances that waylay the spoofish narrative certainly won't win any awards; but as a sharp send-up of the gothic turf endlessly turned over by the movie industry since Bram Stoker introduced us to Transylvania, this is a superior comic spectacle. Much of this is due to Terrence Hardiman's obsessed Professor: he makes Christopher Lee look positively innocuous as he ecstatically remembers the delicious sensation of his first neurosis and how madness "puts spots on the id and hairs on the libido". "This is the man who slipped a cadaver into matron's bath," exclaims Dr Bancroft as fond proof of his host's light-hearted sense of humour, blind to the fact that his flapping daughter (played with delicious naivety by Diana Morrison) is being stalked by all and sundry as breeding stock for a new generation of "lupus Steiner". Hill's productions is superbly tailored to the Stratford East stage; but one wonders whether - like Hill's previous success at Strafort East, 'The Invisible Man' - it will suffer from a transfer."
[The Stratford East Programme Cover For Curse of the Werewolf]
SCENE LIST AND MUSICAL NUMBERS:
ACT ONE:
SCENE 1: "A Prologue" - Walpurgisdorf Church, 1892
SCENE 2: "Antics in an Asylum" - Walpurgisdorf Castle, 1922
Song 1: We're Going To Have Some Fun
(Kitty, Bancroft, D'Arcy, Mrs Bancroft, Ramsey)
Song 2: What Everybody Thinks (D'Arcy)
SCENE 3: "A Meeting By Moonlight" - Kitty's Bedroom, That Night
SCENE 4: "The Incident by the Lake" - The Lake, The Following Afternoon
Song 3: Who Needs The Words? (The Company)
SCENE 5: "Bancroft Has a Nightmare" - Walpurgisdorf Jail, Same Time
Song 4: Lullaby (Frau Gessier)
SCENE 6: "The Plot Thickens" - Walpurgisdorf Forest, The Following Afternoon
Song 5: Every Walpurgisdorfer Knows (Martin, Kitty, The Company)
SCENE 7: "Metamorphosis" - Walpurgisdorf Castle, Later That Night
Song 6: Look Your Best (Bancroft, Mrs Bancroft)
ACT TWO:
SCENE 1: "A Guide Appears" - Walpurgisdorf Mountain, Later that Night
Song 7: Policemen And Scientists (Otto, Steiner, Bancroft, D'Arcy, Mrs Bancroft)
SCENE 2: "A Close Shave" - A Cave, Same Time
Song 8: I Like A Lot Of Friends (Kitty)
SCENE 3: "A Strange Homecoming" - Walpurgisdorf Castle, A Little Later
Song 9: The Moon Is Full (Ingeborg, The Company)
SCENE 4: "The Final Clue" - Walpurgisdorf Church, Same Time
SCENE 5: "A Lethal Cocktail" - Steiner's Laboratory, Same Time
Song 10: We're Going To Have Some Fun REPRISE (Steiner, Ingeborg)
SCENE 6: "We're On Our Way" - Walpurgisdorf Ski-Run, Same Time
SCENE 7: "A Ghastly Plan" - Steiner's Laboratory, Same Time
SCENE 8: "A Serious Delay" - A Road, Same Time
SCENE 9: "The Plan Works" - Steiner's Laboratory, Same Time
SCENE 10: "Will They Make It?" - Another Road, Same Time
SCENE 11: "Gotterdammerung" - Steiner's Laboratory, Same Time
SCENE 12: "One Last Surprise" - Walpurgisdorf Castle, The Following Morning
Song 11: Who Needs The Words? REPRISE (The Company)
REHERSAL IMAGES:
(Roll mouse over images to read descriptions)
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Another Review for "THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF" - UK Newspaper
"Ken Hill's new "monster musical" caters for long established English tastes. Tinkly tunes, atrocious puns, frightful jokes, funny walks, silly dialogue and a group of accomplished actors having bags of fun making an exhibition of themselves. The story is simplicity itself. In 1922, English tourists in the land of the sauerkraut and the lederhosen arrive at a castle promisingly called Walpurgisdorf, haunted by a werewolf and containing, among others, a debonair young baron (Steven Pacey, extremely debonair) and a mad psychiatrist (Terrence Hardiman, extremely mad). Who is the werewolf and what will he do? The moon is permanently full, and off-stage wolves are howling overtime. The plot is exquisitely inane and I cannot give any of it away. I enjoyed myself hugely though. As my old flame, the Grafin Rapunzel von Schadenfreude would say, it is a hoot, dummkopf.
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The rights to perform this show are available from Samuel French Ltd. in London. Please contact them for more details. This show was first commissioned and produced by the Contact Theatre Company in Manchester on the 6 October 1976 with a totally different cast and creative team.
The Invisible Man
A PLAY by KEN HILL
Adapted from the book by H.G. WELLS
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Review for THE INVISIBLE MAN - City Limits Magazine
Opened 23 October, 1991
"When the biggest name in the cast (Jon Finch) only appears visibly for a few seconds at the end as a corpse, it's safe to say that production values are, erhm, playful. Former Stratford supremo Ken Hill's adaptation sets the performance in a 1904 music hall, in which the recent mysterious occurrences in nearby Iping are re-enacted with deliberately bad jokes, straight-to-audience narration (courtesy of Brian Murphy's endearing hobo), gratuitous James Mason impersonations and – this is Stratford – a liberal sprinkling of politically-correct sentiments (the disembodied voice of the nefarious Griffin threatens anachronistically to assassinate the Countess of Finchley). It's an unashamed frolic, bolstered by Paul Kieve's extraordinary illusions: not just vanishing stunts (Griffin unwinds the bandages from his head to reveal no head at all) but cigarettes smoking themselves, and a landlady's breasts being vigorously (and disturbingly) fondled without corporeal agency. Go elsewhere for profundity, this is a marvellous pre-Yuletide frolic."
Note: A production of Ken Hill's The Invisible Man was in discussion to be taken to Broadway in 1999. Discussions were with both the Shubert and Nederlander organizations for a 1,000-seat house. Jim Dale and Frank Dunlop were attached to the production. We are currently not sure if this production ever went ahead or not.
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The rights to perform this show are available from Samuel French Ltd. in London. Please contact them for more details.
The Mummy's Tomb
A PLAY by KEN HILL
SONGS by ALAN KLEIN and KEN HILL
Description of THE MUMMY'S TOMB - Samuel French Ltd.
Opened 8 September, 1980
"The Mummy's Tomb is a play for seven men and two women, with optional songs included in the text. The Prologue is set in Ancient Egypt, in the oldest of situations - the eternal triangle. Pharaoh's wife Ashayet loves the immortal priest Inmutef, who loves the slave-girl Selena, who loves another. Ashayet kills Selena. Pharaoh banishes Ashayet, entombs and mummifies Inmutef. But Ashayet also is immortal, having bathed in the River Of Life. Thousands of years later in 1922 - Professor Niven discovers the whereabouts of Inmutef's tomb and sets out for Egypt with his daughter Nancy and, rather unwisely, both her present and past fiances. Almost at once strange things happen. Ashayet appears as a glamarous modern woman; Nancy has odd feelings of deja vue (could she be a reborn Selena?); the Mummy, when the tomb is opened, behaves very peculiarly indeed. Plots and counterplots, ancient and modern, culminate in a series of shattering experiences for all concerned. Period 1380 B.C. and A.D. 1922."
THE STRATFORD EAST CAST:
(in order of appearance)
Originally commissioned and produced by the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester, under the direction of Ian Giles, the play was fully revised into its present form and produced at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East on the 8th September 1980, with the following cast of characters:
Paul Conway ... Francis Thomson
Inmutef-Amun ... Michael G. Jones
Selena ... Adrienne Posta
Ashayet ... Anna Sharkey
Pharaoh Amenhotep IV ... Richard Tate
Mahu ... Maynard Williams
First Palace Guard ... Tony Scannell
Second Palace Guard ... Bob Packham
Porfessor Niven ... Michael Poole
Nancy ... Adrienne Posta
Farouk ... Richard Tate
Lord Soper ... Tony Scannell
Mrs McGuinness ... Anna Sharkey
Kemal ... Maynard Williams
Rouse ... Richard Tate
Harry ... Michael G. Jones
Chauffeur ... Bob Packham
Egyption Servant ... Michael G. Jones
Taureg ... Michael G. Jones
Anubis ... Maynard Williams
THE CREATIVE CREDITS:
Director ... Ken Hill
Set Designer ... Sarah-Jane McClelland
Lighting Designer ... Ian Callender
Choreographer ... Adrienne Posta
Musical Director ... Bunny Thompson
SCENE LIST AND MUSICAL NUMBERS:
ACT ONE:
SCENE 1: The Palace of the High Priest - Thebes (1380 B.C.)
SCENE 2: A Room in the British Museum (A.D. 1922)
Song 1: I've Got A Thing For You (Paul, Nancy)
SCENE 3: Professor Niven's Home
SCENE 4: The Egyptian Warehouse in Wapping
SCENE 5: Tilbury Docks
Song 2: Oh Tilbury (Rouse, Harry)
Song 3: Sailing Away (Mrs McGuinness, The Company)
SCENE 6: Aboard the Alexandria
SCENE 7: Kemal's Villa in Cairo
SCENE 8: Aboard the Dhow
Song 4: Gods Of Old (Ashayet)
SCENE 9: Ruins in the Desert
Song 5: Life Is Full Of Mysteries (Paul, Nancy, Niven, Soper, Kemal, Rouse)
SCENE 10: In the Desert above the Tomb
SCENE 11: The Tomb of Inmutef-Amun
ACT TWO:
SCENE 1: Ashayet's Palace
Song 6: Maturity (Ashayet, Kemal)
SCENE 2: Below the Palace
Song 7: British Heroes (Soper, Niven, Paul)
SCENE 3: A Small Chamber
Song 8: Get Down (Nancy)
SCENE 4: The Base of the Well
SCENE 5: The River of Life
Song 9: Sailing Away REPRISE (The Company)
STAGING DETAILS:
"The setting is on two levels, the higher running from Right to Left across the stage at a reasonable depth, and high enough for entrances to be made beneath it. The front edge of this area can be closed off by sliding panels, all of which are reversible to give various scenic backgrounds. The central part of the upstage area is also closed off by sliding panels, these always representing a rough brick wall. All masking is in the form of relieved profiles, representing Egyptian-style pillars and decoration. Two smaller versions of these pillars form an arch with a header over the centre of the upper level. The background is always either cyclorama or black travellers drawn in front of it. This production was also designed around a central trap, available at the Theatre Royal, which was capable not only of providing a pit in the stage, but of elevating to form a platform. There are also some flown pieces as described in the text."
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The rights to perform this show are available from Samuel French Ltd. in London. Please contact them for more details.
