Melodrama / Casting: 8m, 3f / Scenery: Simple ints./exts. In this version of the old melodrama, Todd has some grounds for his nefarious activities: his wife was abducted and raped by the Judge and his daughter abandoned, while he himself was deported on a false charge. He returns to avenge his family, accompanied by a sea captain, Anthony, whose life he has saved. Anthony falls in love with a young girl, the Judge's ward, who turns out to be Todd's daughter. Todd, meanwhile, sets up with Mrs. Lovett, the pie maker, and provides her with fillings for her pies. He proceeds with his vengeful plans but the outcome is bitterly ironic.

This book studies the interplay of theology and poetics in the three great epics of early-modern England: the Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained. Bond examines the relationship between the poems’ primary heroes, Arthur and the Son, who are godlike, virtuous, and powerful, and the secondary heroes, Redcrosse and Adam, who are human, fallible, and weak. He looks back at the development of this pattern of dual heroism in classical, Medieval, and Italian Renaissance literature, investigates the ways in which Spenser and Milton adapted the model, and demonstrates how the Jesus of Paradise Regained can be seen as the culmination of this tradition. Challenging the opposition between “Calvinist,� “allegorical� Spenser and “Arminian,� “dramatic� Milton, this book offers a new account of their doctrinal and literary affinities within the European epic tradition. Arguing that Spenser influenced Milton in fundamental ways, Bond establishes a firmer structural and thematic link between the two authors, and shows how they transformed a strongly antifeminist genre by the addition of a crucial, although at times ambivalent, heroine. He also proposes solutions to some of the most difficult and controversial theological cruxes posed by these poems, in particular Spenser’s attitude to free will and Milton’s to the Trinity. By providing a deeper understanding of the religious agendas of these epics, this book encourages a rapprochement between scholarly approaches that are too narrowly concerned with either theology or poetics.

Collection of four films starring Johnny Depp. In 'The Astronaut's Wife' (1999), on a seemingly routine mission to repair a space satellite, astronaut Spencer Armacost (Depp) loses contact with Mission Control for a period of time. Once Spencer has returned to Earth his wife Jillian (Charlize Theron) falls pregnant with twin boys, but her joy is tempered by the suspicion that something terrible happened to her husband in space - something which could threaten the entire human race. In 'Dark Shadows' (2012), when playboy Barnabas Collins (Depp) breaks the heart of the beautiful Angelique Brouchard (Eva Green), an old family curse is released as Angelique, a witch, turns Barnabas into a vampire before burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. Returning to his former home at Collinwood Manor, he finds his estate in ruins and the dysfunctional dregs of his family in tatters. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has enlisted the services of live-in psychiatrist Dr Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) to help with her numerous family problems - but between Elizabeth's loser brother, Roger Collins (Jonny Lee Miller), her rebellious teenage daughter, Carolyn Stoddard (Chloë Moretz), and Roger's precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath), Dr Hoffman has certainly got her work cut out. 'Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street' (2007), Tim Burton's film version of the Stephen Sondheim musical, is based on a 'penny dreadful' tale (which later became an urban myth) from the mid-19th Century. The story centres around Benjamin Barker (Depp), a barber who returns to London after spending years in exile for a crime he didn't commit. He soon discovers from pie-maker Mrs Lovett (Bonham Carter) that, in his absence, his wife has taken her own life and his daughter is now in the care of the man who had him sent away - the dastardly Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). Seeking revenge and filled with a murderous rage, Barker sets up a barber's shop above Mrs Lovett's premises. Now calling himself Sweeney Todd, Barker kills off all his customers with a razor to the throat and sends their cadavers to the shop below to be used as a tasty new filling for Mrs Lovett's meat pies. What was once the worst pie shop in London quickly becomes one of the city's most popular eateries, but Barker won't be satisfied until he can lure Judge Turpin into the barber's chair... In 'Don Juan DeMarco' (1994) Marlon Brando plays a psychiatrist whose last case, that of Don Juan (Depp), is his most difficult. Don Juan is the world's greatest lover, having seduced over 1000 women, and his amorous tales totally captivate the analyst, re-awakening passions which he thought had been lost forever.

Six strangers, a lonely farmhouse, surrounded by brain-eating zombies - what could go wrong? Night of the Living Dead(TM) Live is a fun and hilarious re-imagining of George A. Romero's legendary classic. Set in 1968 and presented in all black and white, it literally feels like the film has been brought to life and placed onstage. The play lovingly examines the movie itself, the period in which it was made, and the film's undying influence on the horror genre. More than just a re-creation of the s