Bone shakers! Players plan to send ‘em home laughing with Incorruptible offering

IT has been a memorable season for Saddleworth Players with a series of acclaimed productions and close to conclusion fund raising efforts to refurbish the Millgate Arts Centre auditorium.

Now, the Delph based group is in rehearsals for the final show of its 2018/19 schedule guaranteeing to send audiences into the summer recess with a smile on their faces.

Incorruptible by American author Michael Hollinger (June 1-8) is an amusing, satirical play set in the Dark Ages, with the Millgate stage transformed into a French monastery.

Incorruptible was only written in 1996 but the scene is 1250, the river has flooded again and the chandler’s shop just burned to the ground.

Nobody’s heard of the wheelbarrow yet. And St. Foy, the patron of the local monastery, hasn’t worked a miracle in 13 years. Peasants can pay a penny to pray to the bones but they’ve seen nothing for their money.

The monks hatch a plan to sell bodies from the graveyard, insisting they are miracle-producing saints. They also hope to persuade the pope to visit.

All eyes turn to the Pope, whose promised visit will surely encourage other pilgrims to make the trek and restore the abbey to its former glory.

That is, until a rival church claims to possess the relics of St. Foy—and “their” bones are working miracles.

All seems lost until the destitute monks take a lesson from a larcenous one-eyed minstrel, who teaches them an outrageous new way to pay old debt.

Everything fits snugly in this funny, endearing dark comedy.

Directed by Verity Mann, Incorruptible features Players favourites including John Tanner, Jon Comyn-Platt, Peter Dignan, Sam Reid, Sam Rowlands, June Holmes) plus newcomers to the stage at Millgate.

For ticket details visit the website: www.saddleworthplayers.org.uk

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