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Theatres - Duchess Theatre

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Butley ( Duchess Theatre ) - Play Rapier-tongued lecturer Ben Butley is having a monumentally bad day. So bad, he's making sure everyone else has a worse one. His estranged wife has taken up with the most boring man in London. His beloved protege has found a new benefactor (one he is actually sleeping with, to boot). In an unprecedented act of betrayal even the English department's resident failure has a book deal. Once a charismatic tutor and an authority on TS Eliot, he now sharpens his mind on his unfortunate colleagues while trying to evade his more persistent students. Withering irony, spite and gleeful trouble-making all feature in his arsenal; inevitably they prove to be the weapons of his own tragic self-destruction.

Ecstasy ( Duchess Theatre ) - Play If you can't have a laugh and a drink on a Friday night, when can you? Overview 1979. The Winter of Discontent is over and Margaret Thatcher's regime is about to transform the country. Old friends come together in a Kilburn bed-sit. Loneliness, togetherness, longing, warmth, love. Ecstasy is compassionate, thoughtful and extremely funny. Mike Leigh is, for the first time ever, returning to one of his past plays. He is joined by his regular collaborator and multi award-winning designer Alison Chitty. Leigh is best known for his films, including Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake (winner of the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival), Topsy-Turvy and Secrets and Lies (winner of the Palm d'Or at Cannes Film Festival). His relationship with Hampstead Theatre started with his renowned Abigail's Party which premiered in 1977, followed by Ecstasy, Goose-Pimples and Smelling a Rat. His most recent play, Two Thousand Years, was a sell-out success at the National Theatre in 2008

Duchess Theatre