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| Les Dennis in Marlon Brando's Corset |
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Edinburgh Transfers: Irish Curse, Brando, PumpgirlDate: 22 August 2006
As this year’s Edinburgh Fringe enters its third and final week, several productions have secured post-festival tours and London transfers.
Just confirmed, Stephen Henry’s European premiere production of Martin Casella’s The Irish Curse (playing at the Underbelly’s Cow Barn in Edinburgh) will transfer to London’s King’s Head Theatre for a six-week season from 16 January 2007, ahead of a New York production Off-Broadway later this year.
The feelgood comedy revolves around the question: does size matter? Every Wednesday night, in a Roman Catholic church hall, a small group of gay and straight men come together to complain about their shortcomings in life. When twenty-something Irishman Kieran joins the group, he challenges everything the other men ever thought about their sex lives, tackling their obsession with 'The Irish Curse' and confronting Western attitudes towards body image.
Following its preview dates at Greenwich and Malvern, Marlon Brando’s Corset (at the Pleasance in Edinburgh) will return to south London’s Greenwich Theatre from 12 to 30 September 2006. Directed by Ed Curtis, Les Dennis (pictured), Mike McShane and Jeremy Edwards star in the brutal comedy examining our infatuation with fame. Television hospital drama Healing Hands is at the peak of its popularity but keeping the show high in the ratings is taking its toll on all involved. Against a backdrop of lies, love and intrigue something is going to give, it's just a matter of who and when.
Irish playwright Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl (at the Traverse) opens the autumn season at west London’s Bush Theatre, where it runs from 12 September to 14 October (See News, 12 Jul 2006). Set in the Armagh badlands, it tells the story of a girl who works in a garage, her lover and his wife through three interwoven monologues. Bush artistic director Mike Bradwell directs Irish actors Orla Fitzgerald, James Doran and Maggie Hayes.
(I Am) Nobody's Lunch (Assembly @ George Street) will have a limited season at Soho Theatre from 6 to 23 September 2006. Can we trust the news? The government? Is Tom Cruise gay? How do we know anything? Steve Cosson and Michael Friedman’s docu-musical for Obie-winning New York theatre company The Civilians spins verbatim theatre into cabaret.
Tinseltown satire Gizmo Love (also Assembly @ George Street) - the latest play from American John Kolvenbach, whose On an Average Day had a West End run with Woody Harrelson in 2002 – will embark on a tour, visiting Tunbridge Wells, Plymouth and Birmingham, where it concludes on 23 September 2006. The ATC production is directed by Matt Wilde and stars Toby Dantzic and Peter Polycarpou.
Ralph carries his screenplay Gizmo Love in a small wooden box. He has long since lost track of where the script ends and real life begins. By naively selling his precious life's work to a big-shot producer on the other end of the telephone, he’s thrown into the claustrophobic and cutthroat world of Hollywood, where efforts to save the script reach fever pitch.
The Edinburgh Fringe, the world's largest arts festival and now in its 60th year, opened on 6 August and continues to 28 August 2006 (See News, 8 Jun 2006). The Fringe’s parent event, the Edinburgh International Festival opened on 13 and continues until 3 September (See News), 11 Aug 2006).
- by Terri Paddock
If you know of other Edinburgh productions that are touring or transferring,
please email details to us at editorial@whatsonstage.com.
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