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Pieces of After Eight!Highlights from the premiere of Pieces of After Eight, performed by
KATS. On an isolated and unexplored island in the Caribbean is a town of over forty pirate families, hiding for over 300 years. Daniel Lightfoot, his destiny as captain now fulfilled upon the death of his father, inherits a treasure map. Intrigued by the contents he travels back to England to find the buried treasure. Believing the treasure to be buried in the grounds of the Seaview Hotel, he and his crew land on the south coast of England and make their way to the hotel, seeking his family's long-lost buried treasure. The hotel is run by world-weary James Riddell. An ambition-thwarted individual who manages to keep his hotel afloat by selling, smuggled cigarettes and alcohol to his residents. In the care of this James and his wife is their niece, Samantha, adopted by them at a tender age after the death of her parents. Unhappy in her marriage to the James, Pru sees their relationship disintegrating and with the threat of the dashing Captain Lightfoot taking her niece, Samantha, back to the Caribbean, she becomes a desperate woman. Put a desperate woman in the company of a pirate anxious to wrestle power from Captain Daniel. Add an undercover excise woman in the hotel posing as a maid. Throw in a Volvo with a faulty gearbox and crumbs of a well-known chocolate mint left under a table and you have Pieces of After Eight. Pieces of After Eight, written by experienced comedy and drama writers, is a fast-paced comedy musical with an array of memorable tunes. Tailored to the needs of the modern amateur dramatic society with a whole host of resources for one incredibly teeny weeny rights fee, this is the ideal production for the budget conscious society wanting to put on a spectacle everyone will enjoy and remember. Using this site you can listen to a number of songs in the musical, request an evaluation and even see a summary of the plot. Biographies Captain Daniel Lightfoot  Daniel is not the stuff that pirate Captains should be made of.
Following in his late father's trade of piracy, Daniel finds that being a nasty cutthroat, a ruthless ruler and a harsh disciplinarian are completely alien to his gentle and sweet natured ways. He is definitely far too good to be bad. His crew have tolerated his niceness because he is who he is - a Lightfoot - well respected in Pirate circles. Can he achieve his goal of finding treasure without the spilling of blood and trying not to faint at the sight of it?Samantha 
Sweet, innocent, naive and completely silly, this niece of James and
Pru lives in her own little world, believing in true love and
fairies. When such true love comes to town in the shape of pirate
Captain Daniel Lightfoot , all her prayers are answered. But alas,
just as with the tides that carried him to her, she discovers that
true love is not all plain sailing. She wants him to stay, he wants
her to go with him. Decisions, decisions . . . James Riddell  Irritable,
sarcastic and world weary, somewhere under these delightful qualities
lies a heart of pure cynicism. His hopes dashed when young from going to
sea, he inherited The Seaview Hotel to become a resentful land lubber
with a longing for a life on the ocean waves while being anchored in a
marriage which is just about bearable. His constant juggling the
finances to make the Hotel Seaview almost profitable all contributes to
James' sardonic outlook on life. Life is a bitch - then pirates turn up!Pru Riddell  Long-suffering and down-trodden wife of James. Somewhere in her heart is the
James she married, but she doesn't know if she can find him again. Only
the presence of her beloved niece, the orphaned Samantha who is the
object of her maternal love and care can guarantee that she keeps her
sanity. Now, she is prepared to do a deal with a devil to keep her! |
"We were hugely impressed with the professionalism . . . You are all a huge credit to the hard work that I'm sure goes in to pulling off such a success."
- Mayor of Kingsbridge.
"The songs, all brand new . . . were instantly catchy and memorable, to the point that you caught yourself singing along after the second chorus." -
Kingsbridge and Salcombe Gazette.
" . . . the best ever Kats show, much better than Lala Land!" -
Audience Quote .
Grant Davis is a member of the Kingsbridge Amateur
Theatrical Society and has taken several key roles both on and off
the stage.
He has been a jobbing sketch writer for the BBC and ITV and was twice runner up in drama awards for the BBC and London Weekend Television. He has written and directed five radio plays appearing in two of them. He lives in Devon with his long-suffering partner and enjoys writing music, reading and contributing to amateur theatre. After years of writing songs, he has drawn on his vast experience to produce an array of varied, catchy and immediately accessible songs. He is also prepared to vouch that the man below is, indeed, very silly.  Johnny Jarman has been silly since he was born but only started channelling it into mainstream entertainment in the mid 1980s. He has written for and had his material performed by the likes of Russ Abbot , Little and Large, Ken Dodd and Hale and Pace to name a few. He began writing for German, Belgian and Dutch shows just as the British sketch-based comedy markets shrank in favour of reality television. The writer of more than half a dozen sitcom pilots, radio plays and a stage farce, Johnny finds laughter addictive and being blessed with the ability to make it happen out of thin air is still a wonderfully mysterious and satisfying thing. Long may the silliness continue. We are listed in Drama Groups |