Steptoe's back...
New stage production in the pipeline
A new stage version of Steptoe And Son is set to tour the UK.
Director Emma Rice has adapted Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s original sitcom scripts for a new stage production.
It will be launched at The Asylum – a temporary theatre space run by Rice’s Cornwall-based Kneehigh theatre company – in July, before a stint at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, which is co-producing the show. The show will then go on tour in the autumn.
It is the second attempt in recent years to make a theatre show of the rag-and-bone men. In 2005, Galton and veteran comedy writer John Antrobus wrote a new piece, Murder At Oil Drum Lane, about what happened to Harold and Albert Steptoe 40 years after their sitcom days.
Relative unknowns Mike Shepherd and Dean Nolan play Albert and Harold respectively.
Rice said: ‘I’ve tried to enable and reveal the heart-breaking and perfectly observed characters that had generations glued to their TVs for over a decade.
‘I am so lucky. I feel I am walking through history – my parents’, my grandparents’ and my own. It has been the chance of a lifetime.’
Here is a clip from the 2005 production:
Published: 7 Mar 2012
