Dick Turpin's Last Ride

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As soon as I opened the door to my box at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds last night to see this horseshoe-shaped scaffolding-and-plank set, I was hooked.

The play itself is an incredibly clever piece of writing from Daniel O'Brien with music by Pat Whymark which takes a legend and deconstructs it in a way that emphasises the romance whilst laying the truth behind the myth brutally bare.

cast in rehearsal

Played and sung BRILLIANTLY by a cast of five, Dick Turpin's Last Ride weaves together the fact and the fiction of Richard Turpin, born 1705, hanged 1739, who was a poacher, housebreaker, rapist and thief - and certainly no hero. The myth endures because a Victorian storyteller cobbled it together from half a dozen other sources, dressed it in poetry and sent it out into a world hungry for romance.

The characters of historian Thomas Kyll, disillusioned colleague Richard Bayes and writer William Harrison Ainsworth recount the life, death and legend of Dick Turpin. The five actors turn effortlessly into about fifty different characters in such a way that the audience is never in doubt as to who they are. The music, the fusion of modern and Georgian costumes, and the fluid movements around the set are a joy.

I was blown away.


Theatre Royal always puts on high class productions and this is no exception. I want to follow it round the country on tour and watch it every night. I want to applaud until my hands are sore. I want to stand here and yell out to the whole country, "THIS is what The Arts should be about. This."

Go see it. Seriously.
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