Lichfield Garrick and New Old Friends have got together to present a festive farce at Christmas 2024, Christmas Present and Correct.
It will feature “all the usual New Old Friends trademarks Garrick audiences have loved” in all their shows since Crimes Against Christmas in 2016. Four actors will play multiple roles, with three of the actors from the 2023 Studio show, A Christmas Getaway, returning. They are Kirsty Cox, Rosie Coles and Stuart Tavendale, who will be joined by Mark Collier.
Cox has worked with numerous theatre companies including Tilted Wig Productions, Bristol Old Vic and Blue Brook Productions, with whom she toured the one-woman show Stalin’s Daughter.
Birmingham-born Coles will appear at the Garrick for the third time, while Tavendale’s first visit to the Lichfield theatre was in 2018 for Elf and Reindeer’s Christmas Cracker. In summer 2024, he played Dr Watson in the Illyria touring production of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Collier is no stranger to New Old Friends, having appeared in their productions of Swiss Family Robinson and Crimes, Camera, Action.
Feargus Wood Dunlop, co-founder of New Old Friends and the show’s producer, said, “we’re utterly thrilled to be back at Lichfield with another slice of festive nonsense. We love the Garrick; they offered us our first Christmas show back in 2016 which gave birth to the Crimes series.
“We’re so excited about this particular show because it blends our love of radio plays with our established style of multi-role madness, but with a little tweak. This farce plays out with four actors playing only four characters, unheard of for us, but of course those characters play many other characters and pretend to be things they’re not, so don’t worry—it’s still as farcical as usual and we guarantee you a good, solid evening’s entertainment or afternoon if you come to a matinée.”
Christmas Present and Correct will run in the Garrick Studio from Friday 6 December until Sunday 5 January 2025.