Local Radio Presenter to Join Guildford Shakespeare Company

Published on: 27 Apr, 2019
Updated on: 29 Apr, 2019

By Alice Fowler

One of Guildford’s highest-profile media figures, Peter Gordon, is to join forces with the Guildford Shakespeare Company.

Gordon, who presents the Eagle Radio Breakfast Show, will play Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, opening in July.

He is already a familiar figure to local audiences, starring every year in the Yvonne Arnaud’s pantomime.

“Falstaff is a larger-than-life character who lights up the stage, and in this particular play he is at his most gregarious,” said GSC co-founder Matt Pinches. “Given Peter’s natural exuberance and charisma with an audience, we were adamant that this part was made for him.”

One of the founders of Surrey and Hampshire’s Eagle Radio, Gordon has been presenting the Breakfast Show since 1996. He was educated at Cranleigh School and was recently inducted into the Guildford Roll of Honour for his work in the Guildford community.

“I’ve been a huge supporter and admirer of GSC’s work for some time. It is such a proactive and progressive creative company, and to have the opportunity to actually ‘tread the boards’ with the team, in such a fun role, is very exciting,” Gordon said.

Peter Gordon (left) as pantomime dame in the Yvonne Arnaud’s 2017 Dick Whittington, played by Jamie Brook, (right).

Merry Wives sees the irrepressible Falstaff in love (or possibly lust) with two respectable suburban ladies – and their husbands’ money. Unbeknown to him, the merry wives hatch a plan to teach him, and their frantic husbands, a lesson. It is believed Shakespeare wrote the play at the command of Elizabeth I because she wanted to see the ‘fat knight’ in love.

Said to have inspired classic sitcoms from Fawlty Towers to The Vicar of Dibley, the play will be staged at the Stoke Park Model Railway in a Seventies-style show, complete with toe-tapping soundtrack and bell-bottom slacks.

This year’s Annual Open-Air Season – the GSC’s 14th – also features a brand-new production of Twelfth Night. Staged in the Castle Gardens in June, and directed by Charlotte Conquest, it transports the eccentric world of Illyria to the British seaside of the 1950s.

Booking for both plays opens on April 30. See the www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk for full details.