Hambletts are a small but mighty independent production company, created by Judy Reaves and David Hamblett in 2021.
Hambletts specialise in producing exciting new projects, taking them to unusual spaces and creating new audiences, appealing to both the concert and theatre audience with a cross-genre approach to venues, ranging from theatre, concert hall and outdoors.
They work with the brilliant adapter and writer, Deirdre Shields who has the great skill of telling the writers' stories in their own words - sometimes from their novels and poetry, sometimes letters and journals, brought to life by some of our finest actors, including Anton Lesser, Harriet Walter, Sally Phillips and Hermione Norris.
David Le Page (Musical Director, Arranger, Composer) and the onstage Orchestra of the Swan, bring dazzling music that weaves around these words. David is widely celebrated as one of the most imaginative and versatile musicians in the UK. His artistry spans genres and defies convention, earning admiration from critics, collaborators, and audiences alike.
Their show Red Sky at Sunrise: Laurie Lee in Words and Music opened the Live at the RSC Festival at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (and sold out) in 2023. Judy and David are incredibly proud that their Warwickshire-grown shows have found audiences well beyond the Midlands. This year alone, their shows have returned to London (Wilton's Music Hall), Malvern Theatres, Oxford Playhouse, Salisbury International Festival, Royal and Derngate, Yvonne Arnaud, Saffron Hall, Chichester Festival Theatre, among many others.
They love bringing theatre to new places, and this summer managed to work with Wiltshire Creative and English Heritage to co-produce a unique, and very special, performance of A Beautiful Thread: Thomas Hardy in Words and Music by the Stone Circle at Stonehenge - which required the use of 'silent disco' headphones for an audience of over 500, to protect the stones!
From a standing start, Hambletts productions have proved incredibly successful, playing to thousands of people around the UK, and garnering five-star reviews from Broadway World, Libby Purves (5 mice!) and others, as well as being featured on BBC Radio 4's Today and Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 3's In Tune, Cerys Matthews' BBC Radio 6 Music.
Judy Reaves says: '...we have created a new genre of performance whereby words and music weave together to mutually enhance each other. We aim to shine a light on great writers' lives by using their own words - from novels, poetry, journals, letters and plays - to tell their story and to lift the veil of preconception.'
Anton Lesser says: ‘Words and Music is a kind of unique genre, neither pure reading, nor acting, but with an immediacy that comes from the huge emotional impact the music has upon the words, and vice versa, and the interplay we as actors enjoy with the musicians on-stage. Quite simply, it’s the most enjoyable thing I’ve ever done!’
Touring productions for 2025, with the same creative team:
Check out WHAT'S ON for tour dates.