Dad's dead and buried. But his gravestone has a life of its own!
After their father's funeral, all that remains for Matthew and Lenny is to choose the gravestone. But from their first encounter with Mr Nigley, the funeral director, and his bewildering selection of etching styles, it becomes clear that this will be no easy task. Then the carefully selected gravestone starts tilting. Is there a jinx on their father, that won't let him rest in peace?
As the gravestone develops further problems the tensions and rivalries between the brothers erupt, leading them into dark corners of their family history, where they discover that Dad's passion for horse-racing may have bordered on the dangerous...
Fringe First winner and Stage Award Best Actor nominee Michael Mears' virtuoso new solo play is a poignantly comic exploration of bereavement and the obsessions it can lead to. This richly theatrical experience is directed by Guy Masterson, acknowledged and award-winning master of the form.
Michael Mears - "one exceptional man" (The Observer) - has had a rich and varied career in theatre, tv and film including an appearance in Four Weddings and a Funeral, but is best known as an award winning performer of his own original solo plays for theatre and radio. Witty, sensitive and perfectly performed, A Slight Tilt to the Left is a worthy successor to Mears' previous hits, Soup and Tomorrow We Do The Sky.
Reviews:
edinburghguide.com, 2 August 2002
"Full of humour, marvellous character actor Mears gives richly populated performances... .Superbly realised by Michael Mears with a mordant humour, underlines by Guy Masterson's direction... A fine hour's entertainment which fascinates as it digs into the underground of grief and choosing a headstone." (Thelma Good)
The Stage, 15 August 2002
"Michael Mears' solo show is an amiable shaggy dog story that makes its quiet points with admirable delicacy... Directed with unobtrusive sensitivity by Guy Masterson, Mears portrays a variety of comic characters... But the backbone of the piece is the subtle and considerate way in which he guides us into the heart of a man who feels more deeply than he realises." (Gerald Berkowitz)
Biographies:
Guy Masterson (director)
 Michael Mears
- A SLIGHT TILT TO THE LEFT (writer/performer)
- SOUP (writer/performer)
Michael was born in North London in 1957, grew up there and trained as an actor at the Drama Centre, London.
He has worked in many theatres in Britain and recently finished a two-year spell as a member of the RSC. Previous theatre work includes playing Christ in The Medieval Mystery Plays Cycle in the Old Cathedral Ruins at Coventry, and Fagin in the musical Oliver! at Coventry's Belgrade Theatre. He spent a year on the road touring Britain and the Far East and Australia with the Actor's Touring Co., doubling as both Malvolio and Orsino in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night for which he won great acclaim, the National press describing his Malvolio as 'the most inventive since Laurence Olivier himself'.
At London's Old Vic he played the role of Charlie, opposite American actor Judd Hirsch in the European premiere of Conversations With My Father, directed by Alan Ayckbourn.
His film work includes Four Weddings And A Funeral, Little Dorrit, Queen of Hearts, and The Old Curiosity Shop.
On television his work includes Inspector Morse, the first six Sharpe films (playing Rifleman Cooper), and Alex Kozobolis in two series of The Lenny Henry Show.
In 1991 he premiered Tomorrow We Do The Sky, his first solo play, at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh - receiving much acclaim and being nominated for the Independent Theatre Award. It then transferred to London's Lyric studio.
His second solo play, Soup, about a small community of homeless people and the architect who befriends them, followed in 1995, selling out and winning a Scotsman Fringe First Award at the Pleasance at that year's Edinburgh Festival. Michael was also nominated for Best Actor at the Festival that year.
BBC Radio asked him to adapt and perform these two solo plays on BBC Radio 4 and then commissioned him to do three more one-act solo plays for radio - A Slight Tilt To The Left, Slow Train To Woking and Uncle Happy. For this work he was described as 'the Alec Guinness of radio drama'.
|
A Slight Tilt to the Left