New UK dates for 360

Just a quick blog post from a dark and wet Wednesday evening in Cambridge!

I will leave Marieke to do a far more interesting post on Friday when she's back in the office but for today, I wanted to let you know that we've just announced some further touring for Hugh Hughes in... 360.

In addition to a return to Australia to perform at the Sydney Festival (performances from 22 to 30 January 2010), we'll also be doing shows back in the UK in early March with a return to both Oxford Playhouse (3 March) and the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool (4 to 6 March).

We haven't had a chance to update the main website with these new dates but full details can be found either by clicking the individual links above or they're posted at the top of the right-hand bar of this blog.

Ok, sales message over. You can get back to your normal routine!

Posted by Simon Bedford (Producer, Hoipolloi)

Internal flights

Right now, according to the tour schedule, Hugh Hughes is up in the air, somewhere between South Carolina and Minneapolis.

Maybe he's listening to the CD I made him before he left. Or maybe he and Aled are having a chat and looking out of the window at the view. Behind them is the wonderful Spoleto Festival. Ahead, more performances of Story of a Rabbit at the Walker Center, Minneapolis.

Story of a Rabbit received its USA premiere two weeks ago. And Hugh and Aled have just waved a cheery goodbye to all the friends they made at Spoleto Festival in South Carolina. Spoleto is an annual arts festival, which programmes an incredible range of classical and contemporary theatre, dance and music.

Hugh and Aled were delighted to have been billed alongside their good friends, 1927, as well as fellow Britons Kneehigh, who have been performing their production of Don John.

Story of a Rabbit has been a huge hit with USA audiences, with some very warm reviews coming in. The Charleston SC Newspaper's review describes the show as one "that links the audience together with laughter, song and tears" whilst the Charleston City Paper enthuses, "you're going to be talking about how inventive and charming it is for the rest of the festival."

Story of a Rabbit will receive three final USA performances at the Walker Art Center this week, from Thursday 28th to Saturday 30th May at 8pm.

Thanks to sjotero for the photo!

Wexner Center Podcast

Final preparations are underway for Hugh Hughes' tour to the USA with Story of a Rabbit. Tom, our Production Manager, will be boarding his plane on Monday, with Hugh and Aled following soon after!

We're extremely excited to be visiting the Wexner Center in Ohio, Spoleto Festival in Charleston and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Click here for the full tour schedule and for details of how to book tickets.

Our friends at the Wexner Center have just released a podcast, in which Chuck Helm, their Director of Performing Arts, discusses his memories of seeing Story of a Rabbit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007 and explains why he's so excited to have to show in Ohio. Click here to have a listen!

Thanks to plemjr for this photo of the Wexner Center!

The Dong With the Luminous Nose flies to LA

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


The Dong With the Luminous Nose and The Pobble With No Toes will soon be flying to Los Angeles, as Hoipolloi revives its comic and colourful production My Uncle Arly: a show based on the nonsense poetry of Edward Lear.

First performed in 2002, My Uncle Arly has been one of Hoipolloi's most popular shows. It was nominated for a Total Theatre Award in 2003. It was also the first Hoipolloi show I ever saw, back when I was seventeen!

The tour has been organised in association with WebPlay, a company which allows primary school children in Britain and America to talk online, and discuss a play which will be performed in both of their countries. This year's project will link London with Los Angeles.

The first performances of My Uncle Arly will be at the Unicorn Theatre from 11 to 13 March. Then the company will be flying to Los Angeles to perform at UCLA from 27 to 29 March.

To get you in a silly mood, I'll leave you with a stanza from my favourite Edward Lear poem, The Dong With the Luminous Nose. (Click here to read the whole thing.)

Slowly it wanders,pauses,creeeps,
Anon it sparkles,flashes and leaps;
And ever as onward it gleaming goes
A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.
And those who watch at that midnight hour
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as the wild light passes along,
'The Dong! the Dong!
'The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
'The Dong! the Dong!
'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'

Hugh Hughes solo show: selling fast!

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

It's not much more than a week since Hugh Hughes was at The Barbican, performing sneak previews of his new show Invisible Town. As we walked to the pub after the last performance, someone asked, "So what's next Hugh, are you going to have a bit of time off now this is over?"

Ha ha.

Hugh Hughes has at least six projects up in the air at any one time. As soon Hugh finished at The Barbican he went back to work on another brand new show:
The Wonderful World of Hugh Hughes.

Invisible Town was a chance for Hugh to work with a larger ensemble than ever before, with six performers and three musicians joining him on stage. His new solo show takes the opposite road, putting Hugh onstage completely alone, sans performers, sans multimedia, sans music, sans everything.

It will allow him to connect with audiences more intimately than ever before, as he tells stories from his past, taking us even deeper into his wonderful, fantastical and imaginative world. I've been in some of the rehearsals and I can promise it will be an incredible show, and a chance to see a slightly different side of Hugh.

The Wonderful World of Hugh Hughes will be performed for the very first time at The Junction in Cambridge from 29 to 31 January. But Friday's performance has already sold out! So book for the remaining nights quickly to avoid disappointment, particularly since tickets are a credit-crunch-busting £5 each.

You can book tickets via The Junction's website: just click here.
Or call The Junction's Box Office on 01223 511 511.

We hope to see you there!

What a week...

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

Phew! Here at Hoipolloi headquarters, we’ve just about calmed down and caught up on sleep after our very busy week with The Doubtful Guest at Cambridge Arts Theatre. And what a week it was...

Six performances in just four days, and more than 1,700 people saw the show. That’s a Hoipolloi record for sure! It was wonderful to receive such great support in our home town. In the last twelve months we’ve staged Floating, Story of a Rabbit and The Doubtful Guest in Cambridge and our audiences have grown and grown. Hits from the Cambridge area on our website and this blog went through the roof last week, and we had some very favourable write-ups from the local press and the Cambridge University newspaper Varsity (articles are here and here). And The Doubtful Guest video trailer on YouTube has now been viewed over 1,000 times!

The company are enjoying a well-deserved week off at the moment, but The Doubtful Guest will be brooding in Leeds next week and Cardiff the week after that. Click here for the full tour schedule and, for good measure, here’s The Doubtful Guest video trailer one more time!

Spectral sounds

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

A big thank you to everyone who came to see The Doubtful Guest in Southampton last week and Plymouth the week before. We've had some very complimentary emails and posts on our Facebook Group from audience members who enjoyed the show.

At this very moment, the company are at the Cambridge Arts Theatre setting up for tonight's performance. We're delighted to be playing in our home town and we hope that The Doubtful Guest is as well received there as Floating was last December. The show runs at the Arts from Wednesday to Saturday, with matinees on Thursday and Saturday. To book tickets, click here!

If you see the show over the next few weeks in Cambridge, Leeds or Cardiff and you leave the theatre humming the haunting tunes from the show's original soundtrack, you can buy your own CD copy in the theatre foyer after the show for a measly £5. If you've seen the show already and would like a CD, just send us an email.

The soundtrack was written and recorded by the production's composer Alex Rudd, who spent the rehearsal week before the first night of the tour dashing all over the country, from our rehearsal room to his recording studio and back to his new baby, writing and recording new songs and incidental music for the show.

It's a beautiful soundtrack, perfectly suited to the eerie world of Edward Gorey! You can hear a taster in our video trailer for the show:



For the rest of The Doubtful Guest's tour dates click here. See you at the theatre soon!

The Guardian preview The Doubtful Guest

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

Lyn Gardner has this to say about The Doubtful Guest in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/sep/27/theatre.southlistings

The Doubtful Guest returns tonight!

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

Our autumn tour of The Doubtful Guest opens in Plymouth tonight! The curious creature will then be heading to Southampton, Cambridge, Leeds and Cardiff. Click here for the full tour schedule and box office details, and book tickets soon!

Since joining Hoipolloi in July, I’ve had a great time learning about Edward Gorey, whose book The Doubtful Guest Hoipolloi’s production is based on. Gorey’s biography is a series of curious anecdotes and eccentricities. For those who are new to the blog and my Gorey obsession, let’s have a recap...

Edward Gorey was an American author and illustrator, and he still has a cult following in the States. He produced hundreds of books, all of which exhibit a melancholic wit and a playful sense of the macabre, not unlike Edgar Allan Poe. Gorey’s stories are full of mysterious mishaps. The Gashlycrumb Tinies, for instance, is Gorey’s take on children’s alphabet stories; but in Gorey’s world, “S is for Susan who perished of fits”, whilst “T is for Titus who flew into bits”.

Gorey’s distinctive hand-drawn illustrations take the viewer into a pseudo-Gothic, Victorian world, reminiscent of Tim Burton, who acknowledges Gorey as a huge influence. The eccentric Mr. Gorey was famous for his enormous fur coats and his white plimsolls; his books feature brooding, ominous figures in similar outfits!


The Times called Hoipolloi’s version of The Doubtful Guest “a playful, accomplished piece of nonsense” and The Guardian said it “captures all the Victorian pastiche, fantastical imagination and ominous air of Gorey’s original”.

I've just come back from re-rehearsals in Plymouth and the show looks better than ever! Once again, click here for the full tour schedule. We hope to see lots of you at the theatre over the next few weeks!

And here for good measure is our trailer for the show:

The Doubtful Guest: Version 1.5

Posted by Holly Race (Assistant Director, The Doubtful Guest)

On the long train journey from Cambridge to Plymouth on Monday, I unexpectedly found myself sitting opposite an old friend. Having carried the memory of her – her physicality and personality, and how much I liked her – around with me for years, it was surprising to realise how much about her I had forgotten.

You can see where this analogy is going: walking back into the rehearsal room on Tuesday was strangely shocking.

Having worked on /The Doubtful Guest: Version 1.0/ it has been fascinating to re-visit the play and watch it change and grow over the last week. Some of my favourite moments from the original version have been reworked, and while it was a wrench to watch them go, the piece has without doubt become stronger as a result. The themes and drive behind the play are far clearer and, if possible, I have grown to love the ever-so-proper Bishop family even more.

So even if you met the Guest on its first escapade, why not come and see it again, and witness even more of the trials and troubles of the Bishop Family. If you haven’t seen it yet – you’re in for a treat!

“Obsessed by what? Ourselves, I expect.”

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

When Edward Gorey, author of The Doubtful Guest, arrived at Harvard in 1946 as a fresh-faced freshman, he found himself sharing a room with a man who would become one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated poets: Frank O’Hara.

By the time O’Hara died prematurely in 1966, he had cemented his reputation as a bold and inventive writer at the forefront of what is now called the New York School of poetry. Like Gorey, O’Hara had rather a lot of strings to his bow. As well as writing, he devoted a significant portion of his career to visual art. He worked at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) until he died, he was close friends with painters including Jackson Pollock and his writing reflects a fascination with Surrealism and Dadaism. He was also an accomplished pianist and he referred to writing as “playing the typewriter”!

This inter-disciplinary approach, combining text, visual art and music, perhaps stemmed from his university days with Gorey, where students were encouraged to see themselves as “artists”, rather than restricting themselves to one medium. This approach is evident in Gorey’s work too.

Over the course of his life, O’Hara became a famed socialite, mixing in circles with painters, jazz musicians, writers, dancers and aesthetes. And all this started in the Harvard dorm he shared with Edward Gorey.

O’Hara and Gorey have been described as a “noticeable odd couple on campus”. They bonded over their love of stylised English writers like Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett, a passion for foreign films and trips to the ballet. They hosted innumerable parties, where guests would lounge on rented garden furniture, drinking, arguing and listening to Marlene Dietrich records. It was here that Gorey began illustrations which would later appear in his books.

Together O’Hara and Gorey founded the Poets Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gorey designed programs and posters and O’Hara wrote experimental new plays. In an interview, Gorey said of the period: “We were all obsessed. Obsessed by what? Ourselves, I expect.”

Over time, O’Hara’s rambunctious social life became too much for the reclusive Edward Gorey and the pair drifted. But that’s probably a good thing, because it gave Gorey time to write The Doubtful Guest, which Hoipolloi have adapted for stage.

Did I mention that The Doubtful Guest’s autumn tour kicks off in just over a fortnight? It’s coming to Plymouth, Southampton, Cambridge, Leeds and Cardiff. Click here for the full tour schedule and book soon because tickets are selling fast!

A pornographic work by Ogdred Weary

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

"Alice was eating grapes in the park when Herbert, an extremely well-endowed young man, introduced himself to her."

What better way to liven up a Monday morning than with some titillating quotations from Ogdred Weary's "pornographic work" The Curious Sofa?

"Downstairs the three of them played a most amusing game of Herbert's own invention called 'Thumbfumble'."

"Ogdred Weary" is, of course, an anagram of "Edward Gorey", the maverick writer and illustrator whose book The Doubtful Guest Hoipolloi have adapted into a rather wonderful play. (You can find out a bit more about the eccentric Mr. Gorey in one of my previous posts here.)

The Curious Sofa is Gorey's only "pornographic" work and retains all the charm and playfulness of the rest of his oeuvre. Gorey's only teasing us by putting the word "pornographic" on the book's cover. Although every page is illustrated in his trademark style, there's nothing too salacious in view. But that's not to say our imagination won't run wild...

"To beguile the tedium of the journey, Albert read aloud from Volume Eleven of the 'Encyclopedia of Unimaginable Customs'."

Don't forget that Hoipolloi's production of The Doubtful Guest is back on tour in the autumn. It's not quite as naughty as an Ogdred Weary book but it's still great fun and The Guardian were kind enough to say that it "captures all the Victorian pastiche, fantastical imagination and ominous air of Gorey's original."

All the tour dates are here and tickets are on sale now! You can also see some video previews of the show here.

"Still later, Gerald did a terrible thing to Elsie with a saucepan."

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

First day

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

I’m sitting at a desk, in an office. This is a new experience and my adolescent self would be furious if he knew. Around the age of 14, I decided that office jobs were a soul-destroying fate worse than death, and that if necessary I would run away to South America and join a shady Socialist resistance movement, rather than spend a career surrounded by stationery and filing cabinets.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve outgrown that phase and haven’t raged against any machines for ages. These days I prefer making connections. In fact, my teenage self would be delighted that the office I’ll be working in for the next year belongs to Hoipolloi. I’ll be helping out in rehearsal rooms, as well as the office, so I can learn how a company like Hoipolloi operates on both a creative and a practical level.

I first encountered Hoipolloi four or five years ago and they quickly became one of my very favourite theatre companies. It’s my first day here and I can’t quite believe that I’m now working at Hoipolloi, not just watching them! If my predecessor Sara’s last entry on the blog is anything to go by, I’m in for a wonderful year.

I’ll be writing on the blog fairly regularly, keeping you informed of everything that Hoipolloi are up to. We’re going to be busy! The Doubtful Guest will be back on tour in the UK this autumn and Hugh Hughes is heading to Helsinki, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania and the USA.

Don’t forget to keep checking the website for the latest tour dates!

Story of a Rabbit is off on tour...

Posted by Sara Green (Marketing and Admin Assistant, Hoipolloi)

Today is the official start of the first Story of a Rabbit UK tour as Hugh and Aled head to Norwich for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

The show then heads around the Country, visiting 7 venues in all, finishing in the Barbican centre in June for a two week run.

We are all really excited about the tour here at Hoipolloi, almost as excited as Hugh who cannot wait to make new connections all over the country as well as returning to places he has been to before.

Below is a full tour list with box office information in order to book your tickets for this curiously comic production that celebrates the complexities of death....

Tour Dates:

Norfolk and Norwich Festival
Norwich Playhouse
Fri 2 and Sat 3 May
Box Office: 01603 766400
http://www.nnfestival.org.uk/

The Junction
Cambridge
Wed 7 - Sat 10 May
Box Office: 01223 511511
http://www.junction.co.uk/

Everyman Theatre
Liverpool
Tues 13 - Sat 17 May
Box Office: 0151 7094776
http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/

Brighton Festival
Pavillion Theatre
Tues 20 - Fri 23 May
Box Office: 01273 709709
http://www.brightonfestival.org/

New Wolesy Theatre
Ipswich
Fri 30 and Sat 31 May
Box Office: 01473 295900
http://www.wolseytheatre.co.uk/

Drum Theatre Plymouth
Tues 3 - Sat 7 June
Box Office: 01752 267222
http://www.theatreroyal.com/

Bite08 at the Barbican Centre
Wed 11 - Sat 21 June
Box Office: 0845 1207556
www.barbican.org.uk/bite

For more information on the tour, or to find out about the show click here.

Looking forward to seeing you on our travels...