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ARSEHOLES
​a new play about Arthur Rimbaud & Paul Verlaine

Performing 12th, 13th and 14th of June.
Bernard Sunley Theatre, St Catherine’s College, Manor Rd, Oxford OX1 3UJ.
Doors 7.00pm. Performance 7.30pm.

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TICKETS  £10 (full price) / £5 (student discount)
available now through our wegottickets.com page .
Tickets will also be available on the door, but we recommend booking online to avoid disappointment.
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FREE TICKETS available for St Catz students
If you are at Catz, email fionn.montell-boyd@stcatz.ox.ac.uk to reserve your seat.



​Synopsis
In September 1871, Paul Verlaine, an established poet living with his wife’s parents’, took seventeen-year-old Arthur Rimbaud under his wing, inviting him to move into the family home in Paris. It was not long before Verlaine fell under the spell of the talented and irreverent teenager. The two became lovers, and their violent and hedonistic relationship would destroy Verlaine’s reputation, torture his wife Mathilde, and alienate his friends and colleagues. At the same time, it was perhaps only with Rimbaud that Verlaine was ever truly free. Whether the two of them knew it or not, their meeting would change the course of French poetry forever.


​At once dark, comical, and passionate, ‘Arseholes’ tells the story of a love affair like no other. You will be taken on a journey through nineteenth-century French family life, absinthe-fuelled poetry readings at the Hôtel des Étrangers, the rags and riches of Victorian London, and a hotel room in Brussels laid ready for a suicide, the whole layered with saucy dialogue, French music, and period costumes.
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Written & Directed by Julia Hartley
Produced in collaboration with St Catz Arts Society


CAST
Arthur Rimbaud — Archie Foster
Paul Verlaine — Inigo Howe
Mathilde — Tamar Koplatadze
Father in Law —  Steve Goddard
Mother in Law — Keshya Amarashinge
Servant — Sophie Cachera
Charles Cros — David Rochat
Théodore de Banville — Seth Whidden
Edmond Lepelletier — Julian Blum
Ernest Cabaner — Matt Gibson
Albert Mérat — Alex Nachman
Jean Aicard — Hugo Kaeys​
Stéphane Mallarmé 
—  Freddie Wolff
Boy — Alex Wilson

Girl — Nicole Rayment

​COSTUMES
Oxfordshire Drama Wardrobe

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LIGHTING
Richard Owen & Freddie Wolff

MUSIC
Composed by Alex Baxter
​Directed by Matt Gibson
Hydropaths Song lyrics by Charles Cros, translated by Julia Hartley

PHOTOGRAPHY
Jonathan Kirkpatrick

STAGE MANAGEMENT
Vittoria Fallanca & Ali Rafiee

SPECIAL ADVISOR
Seth Whidden
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