INSANE ANIMALS Premieres at HOME Manchester

Cult cabaret duo and leading lights of the UK's alternative performance scene Bourgeois & Maurice, otherwise known as George Heyworth and Liv Morris, continue HOME's spring 2020 theatre season with the world premiere production of Insane Animals, which runs Friday 28 February - Saturday 14 March 2020.

The show features a cast of eight high-energy low-brow actor-musician misfits under the direction of Philip McMahon, who has just been named as Creative Director for Ireland's entry in the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest, to be staged in Rotterdam in May.

Insane Animals is an outrageous larger-than-life time-travelling musical comedy in which two hyper-glam aliens arrive from a faraway galaxy to rescue present-day earth from impending political, environmental, and social doom. This 'epic joyride from the dawn of civilisation to the sequinned near future' sees Bourgeois & Maurice on hand to help the human race live forever!

Known for their glamorous and satirical double act, Bourgeois & Maurice are writing for the first time for a large cast, tackling bigger themes, and with a full band. It also marks their first time to actually rehearse a show!

This queer unravelling of past and present, fact and fiction, life and death, is directed by Philip McMahon, co-director of one of Ireland's most exciting theatre companies, THISISPOPBABY, whose shows over the past 13 years - including Panti Bliss's High Heels in Low Places which played at HOME in 2017 - have played to over 250,000 people all over the world.

Musical Director is composer, performer and multi-instrumentalist Victoria Falconer, who was recently nominated for Best Musical Director in the prestigious Sydney Theatre Awards for her work on hit musical Once, and is also part of the ensemble and band. The eight-strong cast is completed by Australian actor and multi-platinum selling recording artist Lockie Chapman, who during his time with The Overtones sold more than one million albums; Emer Dineen, a graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at London University; actor/musician Evie Jones, who recently graduated from Rose Bruford College; Kayed Mohamed-Mason, who starred in Ruth Jones' Welsh Valleys-set comedy-drama Stella for Sky 1; and multi-instrumentalist Jarrad Payne, who has worked extensively with Australian cabaret star Hans, who has just become the first act from Down Under to make the Grand Final of America's Got Talent.

The creatives on the show are set designer Michael Hankin, who won a Sydney Theatre Award for his design on Taylor Mac's Hir; lighting designer Sinéad McKenna, twice an Irish Times Theatre Awards winner who has worked extensively in Ireland and in London, most recently at The Donmar Warehouse on Teenage Dick; costume designer Julian Smith, a long-time collaborator of Bourgeois & Maurice and who also designs costumes for Beth Ditto and Crystal from RuPaul's Drag Race; make-up designer Andrew Gallimore, a Manchester Metropolitan University graduate, who has regularly collaborated with Rankin, Björk and Kylie among others; Manchester-born choreographer Carl Harrison, who and has worked with Punchdrunk Theatre; assistant director Heather Carroll, who performed the same role on our co-production with Unlimited Theatre and RashDash of Future Bodies in autumn 2018; and sound designer Kate Harvey.

The casting director is Will Burton CDG, who was the casting director of the Olivier Award-winning Matilda, and also cast major productions including In The Heights, Jesus Christ Superstar, Disney's live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, Everyone's Talking About Jamie, and Mary Poppins Returns.

PERFORMANCE CALENDAR

Fri 28 February 2020 19:30

Sat 29 February 2020 19:30

Mon 2 March 2020 19:30

Tue 3 March 2020 19:30

Wed 4 March 2020 19:30 (press night performance)

Thu 5 March 2020 19:30

Fri 6 March 2020 19:30

Sat 7 March 2020 14:00, 19:30

Mon 9 March 2020 19:30

Tue 10 March 2020 19:30

Wed 11 March 2020 19:30

Thu 12 March 2020 19:30 (Captioned subtitled performance)

Fri 13 March 2020 19:30 (audio-described performance)

Sat 14 March 2020 14:00 (British Sign Language-interpreted performance), 19:30

TICKETS

£15-£29 (concessions £13-£27)

https://homemcr.org/production/bourgeois-maurices-insane-animals/

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