Bugsy Malone

in the limelight

Huge thanks to Ben and Lynne Benest who dug out the press cuttings and programme extracts appearing on many of this production’s pages.

Ben explains: “Lynne and Jessica were in a car crash on their way home from a rehearsal in the run up to the show: car written off, scripts, splat guns and trilby hats all over the roadside!” The press at the time even picked up on ‘break a leg’ being apt. “One suggests that Lynne’s injuries were ‘minor’ but, twenty years on, she and Jessica are still suffering from the consequences of the head-on — combined speed of 120 mph — accident on the Amersham road. My comment at the time when the fireman asked if he could cut the roof off the car so that the paramedics could get them out was ‘I have always wanted an open top’.”

The pre-press clippings appear below; the programme and reviews can be accessed with the buttons above and below. The photographs are of the set, taken after the dress rehearsal(?) and at the technicians’ dinner in the Jasmine Restaurant afterwards. They are the earliest YT photos on this site taken with a digital camera.

April, 2021