Following our sell-out runs of The Case and The Yellow Wallpaper, Donkeywork are collaborating with The Canterbury Festival to present another new play, The Dark Entry. Based on a tale from the Rev R H Barham's writings The Ingoldsby Legends, The Dark Entry will be presented as a promenade performance in the private grounds of St Augustine's, Kings School Canterbury. This stunning Gothic set is a breath-taking space for the audience to explore and engage with the performance.
The Dark Entry is a ghost story set during the upheavals of the Reformation and follows a greedy, salacious cleric and his morally upright cook. Performance also includes plainsong by a local Gregorian choir, folk music performed by actor-musicians and puppetry. The original script is by Alan Atkins, Donkeywork's collaborator on The Case, with original music by Paul Sartin (Bellowhead, Belshazaars Feast).
The Dark Entry is exactly the type and scale of work that we have set out to do from the beginning. Whilst as a start-up company we were naturally restricted by having no budget, we received some excellent reviews in the press. Now, however, everything has moved up considerably in scale - cast size, seed capital, venue size, company profile - and this will give us the foothold in the touring and festivals market that we wish to build this project, and indeed the company, on. If the play is commercially and financially successful, the opportunity to develop a new piece every year for the Canterbury Festival has been discussed.
This is the first time that The Canterbury Festival has had a promenade play in the programme and this provides us with the perfect opportunity to continue unfolding our remit - to absorb our audience into the plays physical and sensory environment AND have a gripping linear narrative.
“Find the new Punchdrunk in Waterloo's Oubliette”
-The London Paper
“The Case may be rough and ready, but it has ambition. With minimal resources it makes the most of the low-ceilinged basement spaces to create a claustrophobic portrait of London during, and in the wake of, the first world war… You can see that Donkeywork is a company who can make something out of nothing; there are moments when the whole thing comes alive… a great calling card for the company”
– Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
“The intimacy of the piece had the power to thrust you into the heat of the drama, with every heartbeat or flicker of a facial expression happening inches away from you, drawing you further into the character's dark existence… With limited resources at their disposal, the sheer ingenuity of the cast, producers and directors should be applauded… A rare and welcome piece of guerrilla theatre in an area dominated by a far more established arts scene”
– Natalie Li, South London Press
