Hit Me!

Synopsis

A warts and all portrait of the Blockheads’ lead singer featuring many of his best songs performed live, including Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick and Reasons to Be Cheerful.

Our Review:

14 January 2009

Not a musical, not exactly a play, and not just a tribute show, Jeff Merrifield’s celebration of the poet laureate of punk, Ian Dury, is nonetheless a great theatrical blast, not least because of Adrian Schiller’s absolutely brilliant performance as the polio-stricken diamond geezer.

Schiller shakes, rattles and rolls like some malignant first cousin of Shakespeare’s Richard Crookback, an ecstatically foul-mouthed rocker fuelled by hatred, jealousy and despair. He marks the well-meaning International Year of the Disabled in “Normal Land” with Dury’s outrageous, once-banned “Spasticus Autisticus,” beating on his microphone and pearly king jacket with one black-gloved hand.

I didn’t see the show in Edinburgh last year, nor in its recent manifestation at the Courtyard in Hoxton, so I can’t compare Schiller to Jud Charlton, whom he has recently replaced following Charlton’s defection...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

Catherine Roberts - 16 February 2009:

I am dependent on a wheelchair and my personal assistant telephoned to try and book tickets for the afternoon show 'Hit me; The life and rhymmes of Ian Drury' on Saturday. She was told that because of the fact that there were no more spaces on the ground level and the only other seats were inaccesible for people in wheelchairs, we would be unable to buy tickets for the show. Granted it was short notice but it just served as yet another reminder of the fact that disabled people are unable to do anything spontaeneously. I wonder what Ian Drury would make of this ludicrous situation....

Read more and add your own review