Every Night's a Bullfight

It is the opening night of the Shireston Festival Company's new season.

A season which began for Douglas Silver way back in the summer when the trustees responsible for the Festival appointed him Director with a free hand and a generous budget.

This was also when he met and seduced the beautiful Carol Evans, a very talented actress...

Convinced that the Shakespearian dramas mirror the problems that beset modern society, Douglas feels sure that by presenting Shakespeare in a radically new light he will rescue Shireston from the obscurity into which it has gradually sunk over the years.

Slowly he recruits his ideal actors to put on a unique and stunning set of Shakespearean shows with the leery night club entertainer Joe Thomas in the role of Othello and a casting the Capulets as a black family.

Hoping to continue his love affair, he casts Carol as Juliet but each actor takes a huge risk in agreeing to take part in this experimental display as the protests begin…

And meanwhile, emotions are running high in the theatre and several new relationships are forming.

Conflicts are inevitable as Douglas casts both his wife, Jennifer and his mistress, Carol in leading roles…

And with setbacks like Joe Thomas getting caught in the airport with pot, Douglas starts to worry if they’ll make opening night at all.

Will the audience accept his radical interpretation of Romeo and Juliet?

Will they accept a celebrated black night-club singer as Othello?

Or will they dismiss it all as a cheap gimmick?

It is their reaction on this opening night which will decide the entire future of the Shireston — and the career of Douglas Silver…

Before coming an author of fiction in the early 1960s John Gardner was variously a stage magician, a Royal Marine officer and a journalist.

In all Gardner has fifty-four novels to his credit, including Maestro, which was the New York Times book of the year.

He was also invited by Ian Fleming’s literary copyright holders to write a series of continuation James Bond novels, which proved to be so successful that instead of the contracted three books he went on to publish some fourteen titles.

His books include 'To Run a Little Faster' and 'The Werewolf Trace'.