The Riverside Musical Theatre Company are back on stage again in June with their next musical - Made in Dagenham, drawn from the real-life 1968 sewing machinists strike at the Ford factory in Dagenham, Essex, this strike was influential in the passing of the Equal Pay Act of 1970.

The leader of the strike, Rita O’Grady, encourages the women of the Ford factory to walk out after they are re-classified as unskilled workers, while their male counterparts see their wages increase.

After Rita is patronized and snubbed by the factory at a union meeting, the women’s grievances over their worker status turn into a fight for equal pay. Determined not to be treated like the poor relation, the women vote unanimously to strike (“Everybody Out”) and encourage the women at the Liverpool factory to strike also.

However, when the American bosses fly in and lay off 5,000 men as a result, including Rita’s husband Eddie, cracks begin to show in the women’s solidarity. Risking her marriage and her friendships, Rita continues with her efforts for equality and gives a rousing speech at a televised Trade Union Conference (“Stand Up”), leading to the passing of equal pay within the union.

As Eddie finally recognises his wife’s achievements, the women celebrate their life-changing success.

RMTC Creative team

Director and Choreographer - Sam De Vita

Musical Directors - Mike Wren and Jade Tournay-Godfrey

Producer - Mike Warden

Assistant Director - Rachel Lansdowne

Assistant Choreographer - Sarah Wheatley

Age guidance is 12+ and show runs for 2hr 30mins with interval

Made in Dagenham the Musical

Book by Richard Bean

Music by David Arnold

Lyrics by Richard Thomas                            

 

Based on the Woolley/Karlsen/Number 9 Motion Picture

 

This amateur production is presented by arrangement with Music Theatre International

All authorised performance materials are also supplied by MTI

www.mtishows.co.uk

For this production we shall be supporting The Blossom Appeal

Martin Scorsese presents an impassioned and highly personal tribute to Powell and Pressburger’s work, richly illustrated with clips and rare archive material. It’s been said that had Martin Scorsese not become one of the world’s great filmmakers, he would still have been one of its greatest teachers of film history. This impassioned exploration of the films of two of his formative and most treasured inspirations follows the US filmmaker’s film essays on American and Italian cinema, delivering deeply personal reflections on what Powell and Pressburger’s work has meant to his life, alongside wonderfully illuminating analyses of the films themselves.

Producing, writing, and directing, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger created some of great classics of the British golden age including The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. In the words of Martin Scorsese their films were “grand, poetic, wise, adventurous, headstrong, enraptured by beauty, deeply romantic, and completely uncompromising”.

Drawing richly from the BFI National Archive, as well as private material from Scorsese and the film’s editor (and Powell’s widow) Thelma Schoonmaker, David Hinton’s film is both an ideal introduction to Powell and Pressburger’s work, and the perfect complement to our 6pm evening screening of their film, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING (1945)

Headstrong Joan Webster (the wondrous Wendy Hiller) sets off, wedding dress in tow, to marry a rich older man on his remote Hebridean island. Stranded on Mull thanks to the weather, Joan finds herself struggling to cope with the unplanned turn of events.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger weave their course of true love through flashes of surrealism, a life-threatening whirlpool and an ancient curse, disarming and enchanting in equal measure. But this is a film where small moments count the most – the passing of a cigarette between two windows or a slip on a ladder – as they build by stealth into something overwhelming. By the end we are left breathless and desperate to book the next night train and ferry to Mull.

Screening to accompany the new documentary MADE IN ENGLAND: THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER shown earlier at 3pm.