On Holiday With Herzen |
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Bob Prophette |
Jonas Golland |
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On Holiday with Herzen: A Postcard From Ventnor is a witty and thought-provoking new play from Bob Prophette and Jonas Golland, premiering at the 2026 Ventnor Fringe. Blending history, literature, period music and dry humour, the play uncovers Ventnor’s surprising place at the heart of 19th-century Russian intellectual life.
Drawing on Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons—written in Ventnor and inspired by the dramatic landscape of nearby Blackgang Chine—the play brings its characters back to life in a story that reaches far beyond the Island’s shores. From these literary beginnings, it traces a provocative line to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II and the turbulent course of Russian history that followed.
At its centre stands Alexander Herzen: philosopher, exile, and founder of the Russian Free Press. Once a towering figure in European thought, Herzen is little known in the UK. This production reintroduces him, placing Ventnor on the intellectual map as a site where ideas that shaped a nation once took root.
Song List
Lovely Albert by anonymous circa 1855
Melody written by Jonas Golland
Cast
Creative Team
Bob Prophette
Jonas Golland
Meet the Company
Tim Cooper
Andrew Butcher
Jonas Golland
Bob Prophette
Bob Prophette
Bob Prophette (b. 1967, Toronto, Canada) is an artist, writer, and provocateur with roots in Wales, Ireland, and Canada. Raised by Irish parents, he has lived across Ireland, England, and Wales, now identifying as Welsh-Irish-Canadian. Describing himself as a “Priest, Bookie, and Judge,” Bob Prophette tries to defy conventions, blending irreverent humour, storytelling, and artistic inquiry into everything he creates. In his own words, Prophette is “a dad, analyst, researcher, artist, piss taker, strummer, writer, singer, dancer, deep diver, fool, shaman, and prophette.” His works often take the shape of playful but subversive reimaginings of religious and other canonical texts. Bob combined a career as a senior advisor to the UK Government, working at the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office until he retired in 2024. He is currently travelling while continuing his writing and performing interests.
Jonas Golland
Born in Thatcher’s England, started acting school, moved to California in Clinton’s United States as a child, taught himself drums and guitar and studied theatre under John Craven and others during the late 90s. Directed Dutchman by Amiri Baraka and played drums in noise, rock and jazz bands and some musical theatre. Received two awards for dedication to Artquest drama. Returned to Blair’s England in a visa faux pas, got writing and reading, and eventually got a commercial music degree in West London. Started teaching, collaborated and established humorous bands I am Meat, Private Plebs and in 2015 toured for five years with the Tiger Lillies, re-sealing his fate as a theatre maker or music comedian, and tough audience. Ran events and releasing music and started calling it Fools Harvest. Met Bob Prophette at Festival 23 in Sheffield during a fire, and eventually got coaxed into joining in on pranks, later in the underground efforts of Ventnor Fringe in 2022. Works with Raw Milk Conspiracy and 10-piece ensemble Perfect Stranger.
Photos
With Jonas Golland as Kolya Arkadevich Kirsanov
With Tim Cooper as Alexander Herzen and Andrew Butcher as Malwida von Meysenburg
In collaboration with the Ventnor Heritage Museum
With video projections by Bob Prophette and music directed by Jonas Golland
Using masks, music from the period, a live song and pivotal scenes from Fathers and Sons, this funny, reflective, and quietly unsettling story is about missed possibilities, intellectual courage, and the fragile paths that history might have taken.
Inspired in part by Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, which also stages scenes in Ventnor, On Holiday with Herzen blends historical insight with playful theatricality, and selected classical music. The result is a sharply observed, gently satirical “postcard from Ventnor” that asks a disarming question: what if more people had listened?
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