site search by freefind advanced

 Connecting professional and amateur theatre in Newbury, West Berkshire and beyond

≡

New Era Players
Add to QuickLinks

The New Era web site is at www.neweraplayers.org. Twitter @NewEraPlayers or Facebook.

We are now doing fortnightly improv sessions. See below.

Last production

Where

New Era Theatre, Wash Common, Newbury RG14 6NU.

Box office

07919 916009 or email boxoffice@neweraplayers.org.Book tickets online at the New Era web site.

Review of Here Comes a Chopper

13th to 22nd March 2025

Review from the Newbury Weekly News.

Newbury theatre group a cut above

On this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences,” says the itinerant Tarrou, in Albert Camus’ The Plague. Written 23 years later, Eugene Ionesco’s The Killing Game (or Here Comes a Chopper) is a play about a town in the grip of its own “scourge”. Like Camus’ Oran, the true scourge of this small city are the obsessions of its populace, its rulers and the underclass, its brutality and ignorance.

Here Comes a Chopper is among Ionesco’s less frequently produced plays, making it a bold choice for Newbury’s New Era Players, who present the darkly satirical piece with a macabre revelry.

Structured as a series of skits and sketches, the play has no clear continuous protagonists, providing significant challenges for director Lisa Harrington and her excellent cast, who manage to keep their audience transfixed from one absurd set piece to another.

An ensemble in the truest sense, the cast of 12 succeed in presenting what appear to be hundreds of characters across the two acts, as we follow the townsfolk through several months of lockdown. There are naysayers and government calls for calm, the nonsensical application of statistics in the search for meaning, there’s paranoia, fear, unreasonable reason, and eventually all-out anarchy.

Presented five years after our own ‘plague’ of Covid, the similarities are obvious, which of course serves to only give the satirical content more relevance and bite. However, the cast do well to let those moments land with levity, avoiding the urge to heavy-handedly point out the parallels.

The slapstick is well balanced with a handful of genuinely touching moments, beautifully performed by more experienced members of the cast. This adds much needed emotional weight to the piece, and it is testament to the cast, that we are so emotionally invested.

On the surface, Here Comes a Chopper appears to be a ridiculous comedy about a town of simpletons, but New Era have expertly found the heart and soul of this absurdist work, exposing human frailty, ignorance and corruption where we should be finding connection and compassion.

Ionesco was deeply affected by his experiences in France during the Second World War. He was friends with Breton and the Surrealists, as was Camus – though I could not find a record of the two ever being friends. Around the time of writing this play, America had been caught up in Vietnam, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and Martin Luther King was assassinated. So much of what was happening in the world must have seemed absurd, like we were “idiots being governed by imbeciles.”

Therefore, it is timely that this brilliant ensemble have revived the play, at our own time of apparent global madness, to show us that “joy was here,” and perhaps if come to our senses and go to the theatre, we may rediscover it there, if nowhere else!

TONY TRIGWELL-JONES

About New Era

This small, friendly and very successful theatre group was established in Newbury in 1978, and we are lucky enough to have our own small theatre in Wash Common. (click here for a map). We produce several plays each year covering a wide variety of theatrical styles.

New Players Acting Membership

Share the experience of performing on stage; join the challenge of set-building or the creativity of costume design; enjoy the teamwork in whatever direction your talents take you. You could be an active participant in our future productions, or join us for play readings, workshops, theatre outings and a variety of social events. Whether you are experienced or just have bags of enthusiasm, you can be assured of a warm welcome.

If you are interested in becoming an acting member please email our membership coordinator at the address members@neweraplayers.org.

New Era - ImprovNew Era - Backstage halp wanted

Audience Membership

To book tickets for any of our productions, please contact our Box Office on 07919 916009 for more information.

Previous productions