Blackadder Goes Forth staged to mark First World War centenary

Performances of episodes of Blackadder Goes Forth come in the run up to the centenery of the end of the First World War. Picture: Harleston Players (Image: Archant)

Founded in 1927, with a reputation for taking on a challenge, the amateur company based in the South Norfolk town will be bringing the First World War set stories to life in performances at Archbishop Sancroft High School on October 19 and 20 and October 25, 26 and 27.

Having contrived to attain the Crown at the end of the third series, the final Blackadder series, scripted by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, saw Rowan Atkinson's Edmund Blackadder reduced to a mere Captaincy in the trenches during the Great War.

Amid various doomed attempts to escape from the trenches to avoid certain death under the misguided command of General Melchett, he and Private S. Baldrick find themselves shooting messenger pigeons, grumbling about Charlie Chaplin and unscrupulously evading his patriotic duty to go over the top.

Captain Edmund Blackadder and Private S. Baldrick feature in Blackadder Goes Forth. Picture: Harleston Players (Image: Archant)

Or as Harleston Players describe it: 'This is the First World War story of how, destined to have fortune vomit on his eiderdown and to be forever shackled with a Baldrick, the descendent of an unfortunate meeting between a pig-farmer and a bearded lady, Blackadder faced down the slings and arrows of life and got very badly hurt indeed.'

In 2015 the theatre company successfully presented four episodes of Blackadder II, set amid the Tudor Years, with characters including Edmund, Baldrick, Percy, Queenie and Melchett.

The production of Blackadder Goes Forth is being directed by Dawn Briggs. All performances are at 7.30pm. Tickets, priced £9.50 (£8 cons), are available from Robinson's Traditional Stationers in Harleston, on 01379 855027, and are also available online.