A muderous comedy for four actors

"...could be great fun if strongly cast and swiftly and wittily directed."  - Chris Honer (former Artistic Director of The Library Theatre Company, Manchester, following our script-in-hand performance).

Hurtling down something of a similar path to 'The 39 Steps', Six Little Bunnies is loosely based on the same Edwardian novel which was the source for the classic British film comedy of Kind Hearts and Coronets. - Except I take the story on a decidedly theatrical, rather than filmic journey and have 'updated' the setting to the Jazz Age of the late 1920's just before the Wall Street Crash - which features towards the end.   The only nod to the film is that one actor plays the multitude of characters all of whom share the surname, 'Gascoyne' - the aristocratic family at the heart of this tale.  All of the male Gascoynes are murdered, of course, (the dear 'little bunnies') one by one and in increasingly creative fashion... The play was thoroughly workshopped over three weeks, by four actors and director, Martin Harris, before being given a script-in-hand public performance - all funded by an Arts Council England development grant. 

Moses acts all innocent, following yet another 'accident' in our workshop on the script, with Found Theatre/Rocket Theatre, 2015.

With the demise of the commissioning theatre company, Rocket Theatre, the rights to the play returned to me not long before the COVID lockdowns...and now I think we could all do with some laughs...don't you?   That's right, it is awaiting its premiere...

The Rev Marmaduke Gascoyne has a sudden (and fatal) revelation....Liam Timms and Gareth Cassidy in our workshop performance.

The Story in brief: Moses Gascoyne Rank is living with his rather posh mum in a very modest semi in Clapham, London, late 1920’s. His father died when he was very young, leaving them almost penniless, apart from the property itself. His mother keeps harping on about them being related to the Gascoynes of Castle Hammerton – a huge stately ‘pile’ in Hertfordshire. She was cut-off by the aristocratic family for marrying ‘beneath her’ (i.e. out of her class and race). As Moses first witnesses the downright cruelty and snobbery of the Gascoynes and then the death of his dear mother, (caused, indirectly, by their attitude) he embarks on a madcap plan to murder, one by one, all of the heirs to the earldom - the Six Little Bunnies - and the peerage that goes with it…until only he remains to inherit.  Along the way he has to choose between childhood sweetheart Sibella Rogers, and the daunting Edith Gascoyne to be his countess. If he should get that far…

A triumphant Moses G. Rank, well on his way to an earldom... Played here by Gareth Cassidy in our script-in-hand performance.