Grenoside Players Next Production

    'Double Cut'

   A thriller by  Alfred Shaughnessy

This amateur production is presented by arrangement with Josef Weinberger Ltd.

November 20th - 22nd  at 7-30pm in the Community Centre, Grenoside

Who is the mysterious Stranger?         Where are the diamonds?

Synopsis

An ingenious thriller set in a luxury villa on the Costa del Sol .  The plot revolves around diamond heiress Olivia Prescott whose villa is entered by an enigmatic stranger claiming to be her supposedly dead brother.  He seems to know even every trivial detail of their past family life, his papers verify his identity, but Olivia insists with mounting hysteria that he is an impostor.  He manages to convince all around him, with the exception of Olivia and we begin to question whether Olivia herself is concealing something.  The plot thickens when we learn that £10 million worth of diamonds arc missing.  Is this what the stranger is after?  The complications are finally unraveled in a revealing denouement to this taut and well-written thriller.

Double Cut is an adaptation from the film 'Chase a Crooked Shadow' by David Osborne and Charles Sinclair.  The play was first produced at the Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead, Surrey in 1984.

Production  

Alfred Shaughnessy , the playwright.

Alfred Shaughnessy was born in London , his father, the Hon Alfred Shaughnessy, having died while serving with the Canadian Infantry two months before.  His grandfather Thomas Shaughnessy was an American-born Canadian railway administrator, who was created Baron Shaughnessy in 1916, and his mother was the niece of James K. Polk, the 11th US President.  His spent his early years living in Tennessee, and in 1920 his mother, Sarah Polk Bradford, married The Hon Sir Piers Legh and he then became Equerry to the Prince of Wales, and the family moved to Norfolk Square in London.  The Prince of Wales later visited the house for dinner, and he drew on this when writing the Upstairs, Downstairs episode ‘Guest of Honour’.’ He also often spent weekends and holidays at Lyme Park , his stepfather's ancestral home. Sir Piers Legh later became Master of the Household.

Shaughnessy was educated at Alfred Shaughnessy Alfred Shaughnessy then Eton , and then went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst with the intention of joining the Grenadier Guards.  However, in 1935 he resigned on grounds of conscience once stating he didn't wish a career dedicated "to learning to kill men".  He then had an unsuccessful time at the London Stock Exchange, and had a hectic social life, with debutante balls, shooting parties and country weekends.

In the late 1930s, he began to write lyrics and sketches, but at the outbreak of war in 1939 he returned to the Army, and on D-Day landed with the Guards Armoured Division on Gold Beach .

After the war ended, he got a job at Ealing Studios, and he soon begun his career as a successful writer, producer and director.  In 1956, he directed the film Suspended Alibi and continued to direct and produce during the 1950s and 1960s.  In the 1970s, he began to focus on script writing.  His first major success was Upstairs, Downstairs.  He wrote fifteen episodes, and was the script editor for 66 episodes, and was meticulous in researching facts about the era.

He later wrote episodes for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Cedar Tree, The Irish R.M., All Creatures Great and Small and Alleyn Mysteries.  Shaughnessy wrote two novels, Dearest Enemy and Hugo.

Shaughnessy married the actress Jean Lodge in 1948, and they had two sons, Charles, who is an actor, and David, an actor and producer. He wrote his autobiography, Both Ends of the Candle, in 1975, and followed this with A Confession in Writing in 1997.  He also wrote his mothers' memoirs.  He died in in Plymouth Devon in 2005 aged 89, , .