Helen Edmundson's
adaptation of Jamila Gavin’s novel
Coram Boy, produced in the Olivier Theatre in November 2005, was directed and co-designed by Melly Still and involved a
production team of 29 people. It is an epic production with a
cast of 20
actors playing multiple roles plus a chorus of 17 singers performing excerpts from
Messiahby Handel, one of the Foundling Hospital’s first benefactors.
Jamila first had the
idea for her book after a discussion with a friend revealed to her the existence in the mid-eighteenth century of “Coram men”, often corrupt individuals who exploited the emotional calamity experienced by unmarried mothers by promising (for money) to take their babies to the new orphanages that had sprung up in England following the establishment in London in 1741 of the very first of these: the
Thomas Coram foundling hospital. Some babies made it there – many did not.