While St Frideswide's legend - about the pursuit of a woman, blindness and healing - originates in the Middle Ages, my play 'St Frideswide Cures the Blind' is a piece of the modern world with mobile phones much in evidence, transcontinental air flight being part of the story, and the homeless people of present day Oxford playing an important part in it.

Central  it, though, is still a kind of blindness, and there is the suggestion is that saintliness, or idealism isn't that easy to live with.

After our 'scratch' production of the three plays in October 2011 (High Table, The Recluse and St Frideswide) , I looked again at all my characters. The two men, Gary, to be played by Kyran Pritchard, and Dan (Alex Babic) have now developed so that sympathy can be more evenly spread, and the play has a better balance, while Marie (Lucy Walters) retains a kind of commentator role, at the same time being a real character with a strong voice.

St Frideswide Cures the Blind

While St Frideswide's legend - about the pursuit of a woman, blindness and healing - originates in the Middle Ages, my play 'St Frideswide Cures the Blind' is a piece of the modern world with mobile phones much in evidence, transcontinental air flight being part of the story, and the homeless people of present day Oxford playing an important part in it.

Central  it, though, is still a kind of blindness, and there is the suggestion is that saintliness, or idealism isn't that easy to live with.

After our 'scratch' production of the three plays in October 2011 (High Table, The Recluse and St Frideswide) , I looked again at all my characters. The two men, Gary, to be played by Kyran Pritchard, and Dan (Alex Babic) have now developed so that sympathy can be more evenly spread, and the play has a better balance, while Marie (Lucy Walters) retains a kind of commentator role, at the same time being a real character with a strong voice.

'High Table'

I'm looking forward to getting 'High Table' together as a full production for October. To summarise it tells, over a series of courses at college 'High Table' dinners (spread out over a few weeks) the flurry of activity the dons go into when it is announced a major celebrity will be visiting. Whilst the story plays to stereoptypes of dons, as many people who have experienced the University and college life will agree, some of it is quite near the mark (indeed *some* of the sub-stories that are revealed are true or at least well-established urban myths).

First read-through this evening and full cast assembling next week (hopefully).

Stuart Lee
Writer/Director 'High Table'