CASANOVA DREAMING and VOLPONE Open Today at Edinburgh Fringe

In 2018 playwright-director Martin Foreman returns to the Edinburgh Fringe for the fourth time, with two productions featuring famous Venetians - the real-life eighteenth-century libertine Casanova and the fictional trickster Volpone.

In Casanova Dreaming, a one-act drama premiering at the Fringe, nineteen-year-old Giacomo Casanova is visited one night by an old man who shows him his future. Out of the shadows come the women and men who will touch his life in many different ways - a life more complex and varied than legend relates.

Foreman is aware that the play may cause controversy. "The #metoo movement reminds us that sexual relations are often dictated by power, but it is simplistic to assume that all men have power over all women. Casanova may be seen as one of the world's great lovers but he considered himself no more than a servant to the women he pursued. I wonder what today's audiences will make of him."

Adult language and content restrict the production to 16 years old and above.

For comic relief Foreman's adaptation of Ben Jonson's classic Volpone is set in the nineteenth century. Volpone still pretends to be dying to cheat the gullible rich, but his wily servant Mosca is now a woman who avoids her employer's clutches as she builds upon his scams.

"In Jonson's Volpone the master more than once begs to embrace or kiss his manservant. It struck me that the dynamics of their relationship and the comedy could gain extra depth with the element of sexual attraction - at least on one side."

Following a successful short run at the 2017 Fringe, Volpone returns for three weeks with Vanashree Thapliyal (Mosca) and Alastair Lawless (Volpone) reprising their roles.

Martin Foreman lives in Edinburgh. He has won the London Solo Festival New Writing Award (2012) and the Pitlochry Festival Theatre Short Play Award (2018); as a director he and his cast won the Scottish Community Drama Association Bob Buchanan Trophy in 2016 for J B Priestley's The Rose and Crown.

"The Fringe has been good to me. In 2014, as an unknown playwright / director I had small audiences but good reviews for my trilogy of one-man plays Desire and Pursuit. The commercial success of The Rose and Crown and last year's Volpone confirmed there is a large audience for comic and intelligent theatre with a cast is as talented as those I am lucky to work with.

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