Stage D’Or presents ‘THE LEGACY OF WILLIAM IRELAND’, a one-man show written by acclaimed writer Tim Connery, and based on a true story.

In April 1796, the play Vortigern and Rowena by William Shakespeare was, quite literally, all the rage in London. Such was the rage that the subsequent riots almost caused the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, to burn to the ground.

This might have been due to the fact that the play was not by the Bard himself, but a fake written by William Henry Ireland.

Featuring the incredible acting talents of Will Croft (GhostTown and The Unkillable Mike Malloy here at The Bridge House) and is brought to the stage by the team behind such Bridge House Theatre hits as MASTERCLASS, WHAT A GAY DAY!, LUCKY DOG, THE MAN IN THE SHED, THE EAGLE & THE SEAGULL, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING FRANK, PENGE WEST and others.

William Ireland is an alarming mixture of astonishing self-belief and crushing self-doubt. He is a self-proclaimed poetic genius, and an idiot according to everyone else.  His father thinks he’s an imbecile, and can never get his name right.  Women ignore him.  No publisher or patron will even read his poems.  William is desperate to have his father acknowledge him, and to have his own voice heard.  In fact, he is so desperate that he starts writing in someone else’s voice, that of William Shakespeare, proudly managing to not only “improve” on some of Shakespeare’s works by giving them a happy ending, but also dupe the world into thinking he had found a hitherto undiscovered Shakespeare play.

The subsequent riot and near-destruction of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, was, of course, not his fault.