Prentis Hancock’s new adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide at Greenwich Playhouse from 7th to 26th April.

Tuesday to Saturday at 8pm; Sundays at 4pm.

Written exactly 250 years ago, by the leading light of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, Voltaire’s loved and most-read Candide or Optimism remains a winner. When it was secretly published, Candide became an overnight success.

Taking as his model, Leibniz’s treatise Optimism, Voltaire explodes the thesis that the world is the ‘very best’ that God can make it. This ‘philosophy’ is epitomised in the character of Master Pangloss and his famous assertions that ‘All is for the best … in the best of possible worlds’.

Remaining true to the text, Hancock portrays Voltaire as storyteller and through his naïve, young hero Candide’s adventures and mishaps, pokes fun at religion and theologians, governments and armies, philosophies and philosophers. He spares no-one, not the Church, not clerics, not Jews; neither Jesuits nor Moslems. As he cleverly shreds the 'optimist’ viewpoint of the earlier philosopher, nothing is safe from his forensic gaze in this eye-popping tale.

A savage, satirical lampoon at the time of writing, many of these themes remain as valid today as when they were written.

Candide is also performed by Hancock who once again collaborates with directors Brian Cummins and David Roylance in tackling contemporary issues using classic text from old testaments.

£11, £9 concessions

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