Marlborough Theatre Stages Neil Bartlett & Nicolas Bloomfield's NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, Now thru June 1

In its first outing since 1994, the acclaimed show, Night After Night is set to grace the stage of The Marlborough Theatre as part of Pink Fringe's program of events this Brighton Fringe. A classic music drama written by Neil Bartlett in collaboration with the talented composer Nicolas Bloomfield, the show explores a shadow world of longing at once familiar and alien.

The year is 1958. The playwright's father and mother meet at a theatre in London's West End to celebrate the playwright's conception. They encounter a host of characters whose lives are linked to that of their unborn son in ways they could never imagine.

In 1988, writer Neil Bartlett, composer Nicolas Bloomfield, producer Simon Mellor and choreographer Leah Hausman set up the collective company GLORIA. The company created and toured fourteen projects over ten years, ranging in scale from the first intimate, solo version of Night after Night, to Seven Sacraments at Southwark Cathedral (Gloria's final show, in 1998, co-produced with Artangel) a performance-oratorio featuring a choir, a children's chorus , a company of dancers and a full orchestra alongside Bartlett himself. Throughout the work the company created, there was a deliberate challenge to accepted divisions of genre between high and low, between "radical" and "traditional" theatrical practice.

Night after Night, was first staged as a solo show upstairs at the Royal Court to an audience of fifty a night. The second version of the show took musical comedy, complete with tap-dancing chorus boys and a technicolour dream ballet, to the main stage of the Royal Court. The piece also featured unlikely and innovative casting, providing surprising new contexts for artists such as Francois Testory and Regina Fong.The solo version of the show will be performing for the first time in nearly 20 years at The Marlborough Theatre this Brighton Fringe.

"Night After Night tips out the form's conventions on to the stage, shines a bright light in their eyes and watches them flinch.... A tribute to Bartlett and his fine company (gold stars for Paul Shaw)" The Independent reviewing the 1994 ensemble version

In 1977 Paul Shaw and Bette Bourne founded the theatre company Bloolips. A troupe of anarchic gender bending actors, performing hilarious spoofs on sexuality and society, they were outrageously camp, appearing on stage in costumes that had audiences screaming with laughter.

The London group was more than gaudy costumes made of junk however, and used "androgyny as a vantage point totally outside straight society" allowing them to comment and criticize not just gender roles but the arms race, American electoral politics, political repression, rampant consumerism and the parade of western culture.

Tickets are £10 / £9, and can be purchased online HERE.

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