About the Play:

Cressida is a full-length comedic drama by Nicholas Wright. Boys will be boys or girls, or women, or grown men. Cressida is a humorous investigation of the lot of the boy actors who played the female roles in the Elizabethan theatre, only to become unemployable once their voices broke.

Cressida is about life among boy actors in post-Shakespearean London. John Shank is an actor, talent-scout and trainer of boy players in the seedily glamorous back-stage world of London theatre in the 1630s. Women are not seen on stage, their roles being taken by precocious boys. Shank has been one of the best boy actors himself, but is now grudgingly reduced to teaching others the tricks of the trade. Up to his eyes in debt, Shanks spots an apparently talentless 14-year-old boy actor, Stephen Hammerton, rehearsing for the role of Cressida in Shakespeare's Troilus. Can Shank train up Stephen to be the new star of the London stage? With characters drawn from life, Cressida is funny and savage by turns, and has about it the authentic smell of grease paint.

Cressida premiered in 2000 to very positive reviews at the Almeida Theatre in the West End of London.

Cast: 8 male

What people say:

"Delightful, light-minded comedy of manners." — Evening Standard (London)

"Cressida is a terrific play, funny, touching, satisfyingly plotted and a loving celebration of theatre." — The Telegraph (London)

About the Playwright:

Nicholas Wright is a South African-born British dramatist who started in the theatre as a child actor. He went to England to train at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and joined the Old Vic touring company as an actor. After working in repertory he became an assistant director in films and television. In 1969 he founded the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, where he was responsible for presenting a radically influential program of new plays. He is also the author of many plays, among them Mrs. Klein and Vincent in Brixton. He lives in London.