Downstage Preview

Otherwise Engaged

Downstage Theatre

Directed by Antony Groser

For their next production. Downstage Theatre change the scene from the witty world of the Court of Navarre to a literate and scathingly funny satire set in contemporary London

Otherwise Engaged, by Simon Gray, looks like following its predecessor Butley and plays like Travesties and Equus in becoming a fashionable success.

After long-running seasons in London and New York (where the play scooped all major theatre awards, including Best Play of 1975 in Britain, and the New York Critics Best Play Award, last year). Otherwise Engaged has been included in the repertory of all leading English-speaking playhouses. A superbly adroit satire of manner. Otherwise Engaged is timely, challenging and very, very funny.

A young publisher, Simon Hench, alone and quiet in his comfortable London home, begins to play a new recording of 'Parsifal'. He is interrupted by a string of visitors — his schoolmaster brother, a drunken critic, a ruthless girl writer an embittered old school-fellow and his unfaithful wife — whom he endures easily enough with insouciant put-downs and a serenely brilliant detachment.

Well-known Wellington actor. Hay Henwood, plays Simon Hench, the central character; with Donna Akersten, John Caller, Alice Fraser, Lewis Rowe, Lloyd Scott and Patrick Smyth, providing the cameos as intruders on Simon's peaceful afternoon.

Otherwise Engaged is directed for Downstage by Antony Groser and designed by Rohanna Hawthorne. The production opens at the Hannah Playhouse on Wednesday, July 6.

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