Kurt and Sid

Synopsis

April 1994. A man sits alone in an attic extension on the cusp of becoming a Seattle suicide statistic. This man is no ‘number and name’ to be reported in a local newspaper. He is an icon, albeit a reluctant one. The frontman of Nirvana. is about to pull the trigger of the gun in his hand and join the leagues of rock star deaths down the ages. Without invitation, Kurt has the curious company of a man purporting to be the Sex Pistol’s Sid Vicious, Kurt’s hero. Whether he is a ghost, a figment of Kurt’s imagination, an hallucination, a dream, or a Punk impersonator remains to be seen as the two musicians, trade quips and quotes about the emptiness of fame, a mutual understanding of drug addiction and self-destruction. Roy Smiles witty and beautifully poignant new play explores exactly what it means to dice with death when being alive proves to be all too painful and peace seems elusive...

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 15 September 2009

The characters in Roy Smiles’ two-hander Kurt and Sid are Kurt Cobain and Sid Vicious in a threnody of punk that fully compensates for any disappointment you might harbour over not seeing a play about an unlikelier pairing, say, of Kurt Weill and Sid James.

It’s certainly a far cry from Gertie and Noel, but Smiles finds a real groove for his fascination with these twin icons of punk: on the night of his suicide in a Seattle attic in 1994, the rifle wedged firmly in his mouth, Kurt is visited by the shadowy figure of the man he idolised.

Sid died of a heroin overdose in 1979, just before going on trial for having killed Nancy Spungen and soon after serving a gruelling prison term in Ryker’s after “bottling” the brother of Patti Smith.

Yet in Danny Dyer’s brilliantly observed performance, poised in a permanent leaning angle in his black leather jacket, sticky-up hair and semi-permanent sneer, he is transformed into an avuncular sage, almost, pleadin...

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Latest User Review

Caroline Dugard - 22 September 2009:

I was lucky enough to see this play last night. As someone who knew very little of both tortured souls, it was a wonderful depiction of their lives and deaths. Brilliantly written by Smiles and wonderfully executed by both Dyer and Evans; it was also served as a comment on music's intertwined relationships with drug usage and societal constraints. I don’t believe it belongs on the fringe as the previous comment suggested but it's conversational and confrontational essence lends itself immensely well to the intimate venue....

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