Gorey details

Posted by David Ralfe (Marketing & Admin. Assistant, Hoipolloi)

Here at Hoipolloi Headquarters we’re putting the finishing touches to plans for The Doubtful Guest’s next UK tour. The company are extremely excited about getting back on the road, the show was a huge success when it toured for the first time earlier this year and we hope to see lots more of you in Plymouth, Southampton, Cambridge, Leeds and Cardiff. The full tour schedule will be posted here in the next few days.

The show is based on a book by Edward Gorey, an artist, illustrator and writer who is something of a cult figure in America, although still relatively unknown in the UK. Here are five things Hoipolloi pack in their suitcases to keep them in a Gorey mood when they’re out on tour...


1) Tim Burton DVDs:
Tim Burton, director of films like Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride, acknowledges Edward Gorey as a major influence on the melancholic, macabre aesthetic of his own work.

2) Fur coats:
Gorey attended every single performance of the New York City ballet between 1957 and 1982, where he was made notoriously conspicuous by the enormous fur coats he wore to the theatre. He draws lots of his characters wearing similarly decadent outfits.

3) Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats:
Gorey illustrated an edition of this book by T.S. Eliot (here's a picture) as well as works by Edward Lear, Samuel Beckett and Muriel Spark.

4) A Grammy-nominated concept album:
In 2003, London three-piece band The Tiger Lillies released an album called The Gorey End. Edward Gorey had enjoyed one of their songs so much that he sent them a box of his unpublished stories and invited The Tiger Lillies to write some songs around them. The album was nominated for a Grammy!

5) Health and Safety manual:
Gorey’s stories are full of dreadful accidents and unexpected deaths... In The Gashlycrumb Tinies we learn that “S is for Susan who perished of fits”, whilst “T is for Titus who flew into bits”.


Here’s hoping that The Doubtful Guest tour will be a little less accident prone than your average Edward Gorey story! Make sure you book a ticket, or you’ll end up like Neville who died of ennui.

Here's a video trailer for the show:




If you’d like to find out more about Edward Gorey, these websites are a great place to start:

Edward Gorey House
The Guardian's Obituary of Edward Gorey
The Gashlycrumb Tinies
Some more extracts from Edward Gorey stories