Charles Hutchinson discovers a historical drama for Tarantino fans.

IT was too good an idea to resist, and so new Yeadon theatre company Icabod Productions is to present Four Nights In Knaresborough for four nights in Knaresborough.

As part of Knaresborough's Feva festival, Icabod will stage Paul Webb's historical drama for the Tarantino generation, not in the castle itself but in the Frazer Theatre.

Director Mark France explains the choice of venue. "We would love to have done it in the castle grounds and we did toy with the idea of finding a location there, but the structure for an outdoor show was not in place and would have taken too much preparation.

"There just isn't enough of the castle left, so there's no interior space there that we could use, and besides, none of the original castle remains from the time the play is set. So we went with the Frazer Theatre, one of the main venues for the festival, where we knew we could create the sense of claustrophobia and being trapped that is integral to the play."

Premiered at the Tricycle Theatre in London and performed last year at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, Four Nights relates the story of a quartet of knightly assassins who made "the worst career move in English history".

In late December 1170, four aristocratic soldiers - Reginald FitzUrse, William de Traci, Richard le Bret and Hugh de Morville - murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Cut off from the channel ports amid a wave of public outrage, they fled north and holed up in Knaresborough Castle for a year. Nothing is known of what happened in those 12 months, so Webb's play fills in the gaps in his fast and fiery account, replete with strong language, nudity and violence.

Icabod's choice of inaugural production has come about through company director Lisa Druett. "She lived in Knaresborough for years so she is familiar with the castle and the town's history, and when the play was premiered, she did a shortened version at drama school at Bretton Hall," says Mark.

"I became involved earlier this year. Lisa was acting in some Thursday Night Life showcases for new works at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and I do quite a lot of work there in that platform for new writers, and we got talking about Four Nights In Knaresborough.

"Because I live in Harrogate, the story was of interest to me and I knew it well from the other literary works that deal with Beckett's murder."

Icabod will do a rehearsed reading of one of those works, T S Eliot's Murder In The Cathedral, at Holy Trinity Church, Knaresborough, on Monday at 5pm.

"Eliot's verse drama ends with the four knights turning to the audience and justifying why they did the murder. Paul Webb's play opens with the knights turning to the audience as they are about to murder Beckett and justifying their reasons," says Mark.

He has personal experience of the T S Eliot piece. "Ten years ago I played one of the knights in a touring amateur production by the Castle Theatre Company in Poole in Dorset, while I was studying media production at Bournemouth University," he recalls.

Two years ago, he undertook an MA in theatre studies at Leeds University, since when he has been working "pretty much full time" as a director. "I've also been teaching at the University of York, where I taught a module looking at the different 20th century performance styles and rehearsal techniques, Brecht, Stanislavsky and such like," he says.

Those studies have come in useful for Four Nights, a play that combines medieval history with modern dialogue."It's a completely modern piece," says Mark. "The psychology of the characters has been approached from a post-Freudian perspective, and though you could argue that some of the humour is Anglo-Saxon, it's also a modern, pacy and cinematic play, with short scenes punctuated by sudden bursts of violence.

"So it has that link to people such as Tarantino, and as I trained originally in film and television production, I'm always looking to create theatre that is visually interesting and has a cinematic quality."

In his directing of Four Nights, Mark is seeking to break down the barriers of traditional proscenium-arch theatre at the Frazer Theatre. "We'll be using the entire theatre to create the church at the start and my first instinct is to have the actors jumping off the stage to come out into the audience in the show," he says. "This play suits that, and if the play is debunking traditional notions of historical drama, then we're going to do the same."

Icabod Productions presents Four Nights In Knaresborough, Frazer Theatre, Knaresborough, tomorrow, Sunday and August 21 at 7.30pm; August 22 at 2.30pm. Those attending the first Sunday performance will be treated to a free visit to Knaresborough Castle and guide book, so early booking is advised. Tickets cost £7.50, concessions £5, on 0870 2253382.

Updated: 09:11 Friday, August 13, 2004