It has been just over five weeks since Four Thieves’ Vinegar finished its three-week run at the Barons Court theatre in London and we wanted to take a moment to reflect on what was an incredible experience for us and to thank those who helped to make our debut production such a success.
It was a long journey to bring Four Thieves’ Vinegar to the stage. We first received the play, submitted by writer Christine Foster, in 2014, and went through an extensive three-year process of detailed text work, table read-throughs, workshops and rehearsed readings to get the script ready for production. Christine was the first writer to work with us and must be given the highest praise for producing such a wonderful script.
Once we felt confident that the script was ready, we were able to move into the production stage. The audition and recruitment process was intense, we were inundated with applications for every available role and position in our team (we received over 850 applications for the four acting roles alone), but we were also blown away by the professionalism, enthusiasm and warmth that we found in every single person who came to either audition or interview for us.
The rehearsal period was short (six days) and all credit must go to the actors (Nick Howard-Brown, Kate Huntsman, Pip Henderson and Bruce Kitchener) and the crew (Poppy Howarth, Sally Hardcastle, Will Alder and Josephine Langdon) for the way they approached their 
work and dealt with every challenge that came their way. To put together such a strong piece of theatre in such a short period of time was quite remarkable. Our greatest success in this whole process was finding the people that we did. A special note should also go to Guy Sanders, our graphic designer, who produced such wonderful artwork for the show.
Barons Court was the perfect venue for the play, resembling a prison cell without much alteration, and we were grateful to Ron Phillips (Artistic Director) and Chris Deal (Theatre Manager) for their hosting and support throughout.
Four Thieves’ Vinegar played for a total of seven
teen performances and we are extremely grateful to every one of the 450+ people who came to see our show. Building a new audience is one of the main challenges for a new theatre company like ours and we hope that everyone who saw the production will want to see our future work.
We were fortunate enough to receive a string of excellent reviews, all of which can be read on our website at http://www.the42ndtheatrecompany.com/productions/four-thieves-vinegar, and it was gratifying to hear that in his twenty five years of being Artistic Director at Barons Court theatre, Ron had never seen a production have so many wonderful reviews.
We would also like to extend our thanks to everyone who helped to support our production through word of mouth, social media and various podcasts. It really did make a huge difference that so many people took the time to write / tweet / speak / chat with us about our show.
We could not have wished for a better debut, but now we can look forward and begin to plan our future activity.
Four Thieves’ Vinegar will return with a nationwide tour in 2018.
The 42nd Theatre Company 