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Planet Grantham Detention Unit for Socially Corrosive Urban Miscreants (S.C.U.M)
Riot!
Fire! Smoke! Sirens! Anarchy!
An unknown prison inspector, Dorothy Woodrow, barges into the fracas, seizes command and gasses the unruly mob into submission. An uneasy peace is established.
Embarking on a tour of the prison, she encounters wary staff and cagey inmates. It transpires that the governor, Manuela Slaphead, has vanished and that everyone is under suspicion...
Elsewhere, misanthropic officer, Doris Chubb, inducts nonagenarian sleuth Millicent Marshall. Millicent, however, succeeds in unveiling Chubb's vulnerability and is rewarded with alarming information: her cellmate is Agnes Herringbone, a psychotic killer, who is due to return imminently from confinement.
In a series of bizarre encounters Dorothy meets the Unit's eccentric staff. These include Yolande Yale, a new-age hippie, who teaches the inmates breathing techniques and Jim Butcher, half-wit and prison cook both of whom Dorothy greets with unequivocal disdain. Finally she is introduced to Quentin Honeydew, the quite revend prison chaplin who stirs long-forgotten feelings in the post-menopausal Dorothy.
Herringbone duly arrives, threatens the garrulous granny, but is foiled by the Chief, Mrs Mytholmroyd. Millicent is whisked away to be interrogated by the Prison Inspector.
Dorothy tells a disapproving Chief to leave her alone with Millicent. It transpires that the old woman was commissioned by the Department to investigate the Governor's disappearance. Having accepted her brief, however, Millicent was charged with the murder of her local vicar and is, instead, a bona fide inmate.
The prison chaplain declaims a bizarre sermon and turns on a lotto machine which is used to pick the hymn numbers. The contraption shudders and billows alarmingly. Suddenly it explodes and splatters the horrified congregation with gore and human entrails. The body has been discovered...
Are you different, unusual, odd?
Bored witless by reality TV and double D-list celebrities?
Then beware...
The despotic nanny state of an overcrowded Earth has incarcerated its subversives on a landmass in a galaxy far, far away -
How is order maintained? The place is full of whackos, oddballs and freaks. The inmates are strange too.
Caged like animals, they subsist in a hell-hole where survival is second only in importance to maintaining a bouffant hairdo.
Would you be able to survive in this alien reality...deprived of your humanity and tipped toward insanity?
Listen to this surreal musical comedy (loons with tunes) to find out!
Will new inmate Millicent Marshall cope with psycho cellmate Agnes Herringbone?
Will the Prison Inspector cope without her curling tongs?
Will the Chaplain have to serve Pork Scratchings at Communion yet again?
What has all of this to do with the disappearance of the Governor
And why do people spontaneously burst into song?
May the sauce be with you...
Contact the writers, Jeremy Drake and Richard Mulholland, on 07803 152425 or email us at contact@planetgrantham.com if you'd like a hard copy of the script.
Richard Mulholland
Richard trained at Drama Centre London having graduated from London University where he read English Literature and ran the Drama and Savoy Opera Societies. Recent film roles include Ashton Clifford in Miss Potter, Captain Briggs in Pirates of the Caribbean and De Chatelet in E=MC2. Recent theatre roles include Richard in The World Goes Round at the Landor Theatre. Radio roles include Noel Coward The First Noel. He played the Geek in the successful Yakult commercials and stars in the new Tiscali Broadband campaign which begins in September. His website is www.richardmulholland.net
Nigel Cassidy
Nigel trained at Trinity College London in performance having completed a degree in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. Recent Roles include the eponymous hero in Ruddigore and the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe. Opera performances include Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges.
Deborah Sheridan-Taylor
Recent film roles include The Theory Of Flight (Paul Greengrass), The American Project (Laboratory Films), Design For Murder and Capital Punishment (Paramount Productions). Television includes Eastenders in which Deborah played Saskia. Recent theatre includes Murderer by Anthony Shaffer at The Menier Chocolate Factory.
Jeremy Drake
Jeremy trained at the Drama Studio of London having gained a degree in Music from Royal Holloway, University of London. Acting roles include Shane Butterworth in Albert Make Us Laugh, Spike in The Good Old Daze and has recently appeared in the feature film The Plague (Prodigal Productions). Productions as Musical Director include Iolanthe, West Side Story and Noel and Gertie at the Grace Theatre, London.
Jasmine Callan
Jasmine graduated from Drama Centre London in July 2006. She is currently a member of the BBC Radio Drama Company. Other professional credits include Susan Mosby in Arden of Faversham, Martha in The Waiting Room and Riverbend in the BBC adaption of Baghdad Burning.
Jeremy Drake and Richard Mulholland met at Royal Holloway, University of London on an undisclosed date in the last millennium during a production of Bugsy Malone in which Richard played the cleaner Fizzy and Jezza played 'Harp' on the electric keyboard.
Future collaborations included My Fair Lady in which Richard played Higgins and Jezza played second fiddle (he was actually rehearsal pianist).
Bizarrely (and this is a true story) Jeremy and Richard did not see each other again for 5 years until they bumped into each other along Whitehall.
Richard was desperately looking for a musical director for a production of Noel and Gertie and had just left the National Portrait Gallery where he had been looking at Noel's bust (so to speak). His first thought had been to ask Jezza but he had no idea of his whereabouts.
So imagine his amazement, when, waiting for the bus, he saw Jezza crossing the road. He stopped him, asked him to be MD Jezza rashly said yes and the Drake/ Mulholland collaberation began.
Jezza and Richard perform together in cabaret. This is their first foray into writing creatively.
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