2008 @ notlikecalvin news

Aeneas Faversham Forever had it’s first performance all the way back in March at the venerable Bedlam Theatre in Edinburgh, with a quick stop at the Glasgow Comedy Festival. Since then it’s changed a lot and all for the better, if winning Best Comedy at the Brighton Fringe Festival is anything to go by.

This time the boys Dreadful have written an actual play rather than a series of sketches, which certainly makes lighting it a more rewarding experience. We recently held our official Edinburgh previews at the lovely Greenwich Theatre to the largest audiences we’ve ever had and it went down really well. There are still a couple of extra-special final touches that will get added to the production as it makes its way Fringewards, but we’re in great shape.

This week we’re on at the Newbury Comedy Festival, and next week we’ll be in a field somewhere in Suffolk at Latitude. Then it’s up to the wonderful Pleasance Two in Edinburgh for a whole month; please do pop along to laugh at the jokes and gasp at the gobos.

Linkage:
The Penny Dreadfuls / backstage blog
notlikecalvin portfolio
Photo gallery @ Flickr
Book online at edfringe.com

Last week we set up camp at the Pleasance for the mightiest Sketchatron to date. With a line-up featuring our own Penny Dreadfuls, The Idiots of Ants, mighty award-herders Pappy’s Fun Club and the almost unbearably lovely The Sunday Defensive.

With so much quality on-stage, the show sold out a couple of days in advance, and the Pleasance was packed to the rafters with comedy cognoscente. The Defensive had some brand new material and Pappy’s held a meat raffle. An exhausting, wonderful, amazingly good value-for-money night, which is why we’re doing it again in April. (Although the current naming convention dictates the next one should be called Sketchatron vs Predator, apparently we can’t have that.) Book now!

I was a little too busy to listen live to the third episode of The Brothers Faversham last Friday night (see above), but the fourth and final episode is pushed over the airwaves tonight—you should be able to listen again for the next week. There’s a second series on the way, so I’m told, and the boys are appearing in all sorts of exciting projects in the coming months; keep an eye on the Backstage Diary for info-treats.

A few months ago The Penny Dreadfuls recorded their first radio series—The Brothers Faversham for the BBC. The first episode went out last week on Radio 7, so there’s still time to Listen Again online. It’s a four-part series glistening with comic gems; I’d forgotten just how funny it was, and the edit is some sort of miracle to cram the forty-odd minutes into a half-hour slot without seeming to lose anything.

BBC 7 largely airs repeats of comedy and drama from the archives, so a specially-made new series seems to be getting a nice push from the network—they’ve put up an interview and everything. For the even more inquisitive, my photos from the recordings are available for perusal.

Eagle-eared listeners may recognise The Brothers Faversham‘s theme tune from the live show; Maurice Jarre’s “Fanfare” from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome usually ushers in The Prime Minister, but works really well in the radio series too.

[Nerd note: the online live audio stream of BBC 7 is broadcast in mono, while Listen Again shows are stereo. Goodness knows why, but Listening Again will give you twice as much Faverfun than staying up in the wee hours.]

After much wailing and knashing of teeth I’ve tweaked the notlikecalvin site design: the content is now left-aligned in the browser window, rather than centered. It’s a small change, but the site now renders more consistently across different platforms. There are, of course, more bits and pieces that need doing—I’ll be having a few polite words with Internet Explorer, for a start…

Content-wise, On Wonderland and Aeneas Faversham Returns now have their own sections, and I’ve added photos from the Off-Broadway run in New York to the Radio gallery.

notlikecalvin news

↳ lighting design & theatre projects by neil e. hobbs

Faversham Forever: Begins

Sketchatron: Resurrection

Broadcasting On All Frequencies

Leftward Ho!

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