Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness

Description

'Ladies and gentlemen, as some of you may know, my name is Edward Gant: prodigy, soldier, traveller, poet - but always and ever a showman.' In 1881, the famed and enigmatic impresario Mr Edward Gant presented his renowned travelling show for the final time. The opiate-addicted actor manager showcased his troupe creating a spectacle of grotesquery, black comedy, mystery and magic realism. Over a century later, playwright Anthony Neilson has reconstructed this intriguing and fantastic historical event in a theatrical piece that combines the melodrama and extravagance with the painful loneliness that characterised a Victorian freak show. Neilson's play offers a strange and beautiful exploration of sadness and mortality, probing even the nature of theatre itself. 'Without further ado, I present for your astonishment the Extraordinary! The Terrible! The AMAZING FEATS OF LONELINESS.' Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness was first produced at the Drum Theatre, Plymouth, in 2002, and was revived by Headlong Theatre and the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton, in February 2009.

Anthony Neilson is an Artistic Associate of National Theatre of Scotland and a creator of pioneering, taboo-breaking new work. He writes and directs witty, bold and compassionate plays that explore unchartered psychological territories.

'Lost love echoes mournfully through the gleeful grotesquerie... This play touches on the melancholy at the heart of human existence, and on art's role as both its expression and as palliative... Neilson holds up a fairground mirror that reveals the sadness and ugliness, the unlovely, fearful inner self that each of us struggles to keep hidden... It's uncannily hard to look away.' * Sam Marlowe, The Times, 6.3.09 * 'Imagine Shockheaded Peter crossed with a Carry On film, and you have something of the flavour of this 90-minute show, which veers wildly between vomit jokes and something much more bruised in its examination of the imagination, the human heart and the role of theatre itself.' * Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 6.3.09 * 'This makes for an enthralling Russian doll of a play, which...gradually unravels a delicious concoction of artifice and truth.' * Neil Cooper, Herald, 19.3.09 * 'There is a real undercurrent of sadness. We're reminded of the loneliness of the travelling performer, how theatre is based on artifice... A show about the power of the imagination - it laughts in the teeth of death.' * Liz Hoggard, Evening Standard, 2.4.09 * 'Neilson's fantasies are unforgettable.' * Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday, 5.4.09 *