Remember Safe House? It first featured in the programme four years ago, then it made the 2006 showcase at the Soho Theatre, and now comes its long-awaited and long-deserved theatrical debut, at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden as part of the Camden Fringe Festival. It shows for a week, with six performances from August 18 to the 23rd, at the excellent hour of three o'clock. So you can get drunk before the show, sober up for an hour, then hit the bar for some hair of the dog afterwards.As the blurb explains:
"Everybody enjoys a drink but nobody enjoys an alcoholic.
In a spectacular drama of kindness, cruelty and cocktails, Johnnie Othringshaw struggles to clutch at reality with a mind so disconnected that his past becomes inseparable from his present. Good job he’s got a sense of humour..."
It stars such P-P luminaries as Niall Spooner-Harvey, Chris Prior and Victoria Johnston, and is directed by P-P actress and former soap starlet, Sue Dawson. It is, of course, written by Eamon McDonnell.
Be there.
Seen it twice and loved it. The constraints of a 60 minute Fringe production mean that the actors have to work really hard to take us backwards and forwards in time to different locations. Fundamentally it is a compassionate story about how little Johnny is overtaken by alocohol and loses everything, even the lovely Victoria Johnson. Is it all because of his brutal father (a frightening performance by Chris Prior)? Probably not. Johnny has those chances that we all have but doesn't take them, poor Johnny. A wonderfully sympathetic performance by Niall Spooner-Harvey, skilfully directed by Sue Dawson.
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