{"id":11136,"date":"2015-10-15T06:30:05","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T13:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=11136"},"modified":"2015-10-05T14:30:20","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T21:30:20","slug":"new-play-combines-batman-and-downton-abbey-at-craigdarroch-castle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/10\/15\/new-play-combines-batman-and-downton-abbey-at-craigdarroch-castle\/","title":{"rendered":"New play combines Batman and Downton Abbey<\/em> at Craigdarroch Castle"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

The Lord of Misrule and his psychotic henchmen have taken you and the staff of Arkenham Abbey, an insane asylum in the English countryside, hostage. Your only hope for escape is the Knight Watchman, with whom the asylum inmates have demanded a meeting. As a dedicated foe of all criminals, you can be sure he will respond… but will he survive what the Fool and his gang have in store for him?<\/p>\n

Rest assured, this is just the happenings of Arkenham Abbey<\/i>, a play taking place at Craigdarroch Castle that mashes up Batman and Downton Abbey.<\/i> Local theatre veterans David Radford and Christina Patterson of Launch Pad Productions adapted it from various Batman comics such as Alan Moore\u2019s The Killing Joke<\/i> and Grant Morrison\u2019s Arkham Asylum<\/i>, as well as some of their own original inspirations, and the Downton Abbey<\/i> television series. A Batman of the inter-war period (known as the Knight Watchman in this interpretation) battles the likes of the Fool, the Puzzler, the Straw Man, and Pantaloony, all of whom are English-accented and in 1920s garb.<\/p>\n

\"Arkenham<\/a>
Arkenham Abbey<\/em> shows a whole new side of the caped crusader (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe had to build our own unique vision of the Batman mythology with its own style and personality, so we decided to set it in the 1920s,\u201d says Radford. \u201cI like the post-Edwardian look, it\u2019s got a classy look to it, and then we stumbled onto the idea that it should be The Dark Knight<\/i> meets Downton Abbey.<\/i> So in order to stay away from the copyright we decided it would be England instead of America, and all of the characters would have English accents, either upper class or lower class, depending on who they are in the show. That\u2019s what creates the Downton Abbey<\/i> vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Radford and Patterson\u2019s site-specific theatrical work began when they worked as historical interpreters in Barkerville, BC. There, they expanded from re-enactors telling factual historical stories to staging plays such as A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/i> in and around the buildings, with the audience moving with the actors from scene to scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sort of fell in love with the idea,\u201d says Radford, \u201cso we wanted to continue on doing that here in Victoria with the Castle shows.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this story, the asylum inmates have taken hostages and demanded the Knight Watchman appear for a meeting. They\u2019ve decided they want to prove a point\u0143that he, a costumed crime-fighter, is just as insane as they are. From the top of the castle downward, it\u2019s a descent into madness as the psychotic criminals torture and terrorize our hero, with the audience following from room to room.<\/p>\n

\u201cCastle shows are very different from any other theatre experience you\u2019re going to have because it\u2019s very intimate: you are four feet from the actors,\u201d says Radford. \u201cIt\u2019s not like you\u2019re sitting in the back row of the theatre; it\u2019s quite real, right there. And because of that, it does have these moments that are very intimate and can be very scary. We are doing the show at Halloween, so there\u2019s torture, there\u2019s murder and mayhem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Radford hopes that Downton<\/i> fans will be just as interested as fans of the Caped Crusader, even though Lord Grantham is not present.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have our own Lord,\u201d says Radford, \u201cthe Lord of Misrule, which is what the Fool represents. He\u2019s the high-status character, and through that you have a servant, staff… because the play is about duality, you have some characters that are both high class and lower class almost at the same time. We do the gothic horror part of the story, and the class system part. That\u2019s the fun and the insanity of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arkenham Abbey
\n<\/i>8 pm Thursday, October 15 to Saturday, October 31
\n$28, Craigdarroch Castle
\nthecastle.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The Lord of Misrule and his psychotic henchmen have taken you and the staff of Arkenham Abbey, an insane asylum in the English countryside, hostage. Your only hope for escape is the Knight Watchman, with whom the asylum inmates have demanded a meeting. As a dedicated foe of all criminals, you can be sure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-october-7-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11138,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136\/revisions\/11138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}