Skip to main content

It's a Broadway World After All.

It's been a while, but here's a short interview I did last week about my show for Broadway World:
Tell us a bit about Niche.
'Niche' is about embracing my fascination for the small details in life, and realising it's better to be true to who I am than to homogenise myself to be what others expect me to be. 
The older I get, the more I accept aspects of my personality and interests I might have kept to myself in the past: yes, I'm a big fan of the band Wings. Yes, I've seen every episode of Diagnosis Murder and enjoyed them all, bar the one that claims vampires are real and the one in which Dick van Dyke plays every member of a whole family. Previously, I would have played these things down, because I was worried people would judge me, but I've since learnt that's ridiculous: I'm allowed to like what I like and sod what anyone thinks. So in this show I'm celebrating the fact others may see me as a niche prospect; so what if I don't go down well in front of a stag do? Who wants to amuse a gaggle of polo-shirt-wearing sunburnt Phil Mitchell lookalikes anyway?
Where else might we know you from?
You may remember me from the 2004 advert for the AA or seen me play the integral role of Richard in the West End musical Dreamboats and Petticoats. That, or I might have asked to borrow a fiver from you on the street.
As this is your fifth brand new show at the festival do you think you know what to expect from the fringe?
I should say so. The more you do it, the more you accept it for what it is and make peace with the fact you'll probably come out the other side poorer and more irritable. But however much of a glutton for punishment I am for returning each year like a moth to a flame, I still want to keep doing it; can you develop Stockholm Syndrome for a fringe festival?
Who would you recommend comes to see Niche?
People with a high resistance to the spores in the air at my underground venue that threaten to reinstate a medieval lung disease that's long been dormant. That, and anyone perplexed by the success of James Corden.
Are there any other shows you're hoping to catch in Edinburgh?
Phil Kay's always at the top of my list, though I'm also looking forward to seeing Bec Hill, Jenny Collier and Brodi Snook. 

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...
Read more

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...
Read more

"Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let it Shine."

Tonight saw the second instalment of BBC1’s latest advertise-a-musical-for-months-and-then-cast-it-with-performers-too-inexperienced-to-do-it-a-thon ‘Let it S̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ Shine’ (or as I call it: ‘REAL AUDITIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE THIS’). I didn’t watch it (clearly), but being reminded of how angry seeing just five minutes of it made me last week caused me to mull over what I would call a musical based on the band’s songbook, if I was responsible for it. Here are a my suggestions: IDEAS FOR TITLE OF A TAKE THAT MUSICAL: Barlow! Dirty Fat-Dancing Orange! A Million Love-changes-everything Songs Owen! Howard's End Pray Misérables Mamma Marka! Babe (with a pig as the lead) …BUT MY FAVOURITE HAS TO BE: Jason & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. "It was Orange, Orange, Orange, Orange..." (TAKE) THAT’S ENOUGH OF (TAKE) THAT.
Read more