Comedy
Theatre
Touch Tour
Two Spike Milligan scripts are parachuting onto the Allen Hall stage. Quick, escape to the ticket booth, it's an invasion!
See tickets below
Presented by: Harry Almey — SillyBilly Productions
From: Ōtepoti | Dunedin
Gasp, Spike Milligan's The Goon Show! Everybody, run for your lives!!!
SillyBilly Productions is panging with pride as it presents a world rarity: a stage adaptation of The Goon Show.
Two-time and two-bit director of The Goon Show scripts Harry Almey marches back into Allen Hall with a well-tested troupe of troublemaking performers at his back. And this time, they're armed with two scripts! Namely, The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler (of Bexhill-on-Sea) and Ye Bandit of Sherwood Forest. A double bill that would be criminal to miss.
What inspired The Goon Show? Lunacy. What did it inspire? Just about all comedy since. With a cult-following that would make Doctor Who blush, it was a BBC radio show of serialised comedy which ran during the 50s, and dominated the airwaves. Now, the outbreak of contagious laughter has gone international!
Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe ducked and dived their way through such classic cardboard-cutout characters as Eccles, Bluebottle and Bloodnok. Milligan himself penned all 200 episodes. With bombast, they led a lecture in poking fun at power; that comedy could be chaotic and still engage listeners was their lesson. And we're excellent learners.
This show is an homage to those geniuses.
And we show our respect to those great Goons by holding to their format. Each performer takes on a Goon, and their corresponding character roster. For instance, Lily Lindley takes on Milligan's characters Eccles and Moriarty, while Bloodnok and Bluebottle are Oisin Benn's as much as they were Sellers'. The walls knocked down, the audience sees into their workplace – a sterile BBC recording studio, conquered by the chaos of the Goons!
So, dear Dunedinites: Will you laugh? Will you scream in terror? Or is Spike Milligan's popularity waning?
Have your say, and join the masses flocking to cast their vote at the ticket booth.
This is the world premiere of this show, production company, and cacophony we call "actors." Strange bunch.
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