Kneehigh’s Asylum is back in a Festival of Pandemonium. Summer’s most joyously subversive festival of theatre returns from 2 August to 22 September with three thrillingly inventive shows, all staged in the company’s award-winning purpose built tent, situated in the beautiful surroundings of the Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall.
In a season of madness, mayhem, and surprise, The Asylum will be transformed into a wonderland of carnivalesque antics and general misrule; it will include a riotous new musical, Ubu Karaoke, inspired by Alfred Jarry’s absurdist comedy which will be performed in promenade, the return of Simon Harvey’s Fup based on Jim Dodge’s cult classic about an overweight, whisky swilling duck and Quentin Blake’s irresistible classic The Dancing Frog, reimagined for all the family in a new version by Kneehigh’s Artistic Director Mike Shepherd.
UBU KARAOKE!
Devised by the Company
Directed by Carl Grose and Keziah Serreau
Designed by Michael Vale
Musical Direction by Charles Hazlewood
Thursday 2 to Saturday 25 August 2018
A roof-raising stark-raving sing-along satire!
Carl Grose and Keziah Serreau direct the phantasmagorical and savagely funny Ubu Karaoke, a new musical in promenade inspired by Alfred Jarry’s riot-inducing masterpiece, a show which puts the audience at its heart.
We all know an Ubu. Impossibly greedy, unstoppably crude, inexorably hell-bent on making our country great again! Sound familiar?
In an unruly evening of music, irreverence and surprise, this brilliant dark comedy transports the audience into the peculiar landscape where classic favourite songs rub up against theatre’s most anarchic creation – King Ubu.
The full cast of performers includes Kneehigh regulars Niall Ashdown, Kyla Goodey, Robi Luckay, Alex Lupo, Katy Owen, Justin Radford, Ian Ross and Mike Shepherd.
Featuring some of the most iconic rock & pop anthems of all time, performed by a belting Kneehigh band led by Ian Ross plus an extraordinary choir of extras – the audience – Ubu Karaoke is a deliriously unhinged improvised promenade musical where everyone can sing as one in perfect protest.
Suitable for adults, teenagers and adventurous children over the age of 10.
FUP
Based on the novel by Jim Dodge
Adapted and directed by Simon Harvey
Composer – Ben Sutcliffe. Designed by Rosanna Vize with lighting by Malcolm Rippeth and sound by Andy Graham. Puppets designed by Lyndie Wright
Friday 7 to Saturday 22 September 2018
One hundred year old Grandaddy Jake and his enormous grandson Tiny live life on the fringes, drinking whiskey, building fences, boasting of immortality. But then, Fup arrives – an ass-kicking, web-footed, feathery sonofagun. See, Fup is a duck. A very big duck. A very big duck indeed… And she is going to change their world forever.
FUP is a big-hearted, uproarious modern fable about family, love and nature set in a weird and wild Cornwall not so different from this one. Fup enjoyed a hugely successful sold-out run when it first played at the Asylum in 2016, it returns now with all its feathers, featuring live, foot-stomping music, quacking puppetry and Kneehigh’s infamous eccentricity and charm, FUP is a story like no other.
The full cast is Zaid Al-Rikabi (Musician), Jenny Beare (Gabrielle), Calvin A. Dean (Tiny), Rachel Leonard (Fup), Dave Mynne (Grandaddy Jake) and Ben Sutcliffe (Musician).
Fup will embark on a UK tour this Autumn. Full dates and information to be announced shortly.
THE DANCING FROG
From the story by Quentin Blake
Directed by Mike Shepherd
7 to 25 August 2018 at 3pm
Based on Quentin Blake’s The Story of the Dancing Frog, Kneehigh have re-spun this beautiful tale of hope and courage – made at home in their Cornish Barns – and can’t wait to whisk you away on an adventure.
Poor Gertrude thinks she’ll never have any love or laughter again when she finds out that her husband’s ship has sunk. But then she finds George – a dancing frog! Soon the duo are touring the world with their hip hop beats, spreading light and laughter everywhere they go.
The full cast is Jenny Beare, Ailsa Dalling, Tim Dalling and Sarah Wright.
Suitable for all ages.
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