Last Updated on 18 June 2021 by Showcall Editorial Team
A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad), Black Is the Color of My Voice, Friend (The One With Gunther) and Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope are to go online
Four hit shows have been captured on film by Seabright Productions for streaming online globally via Stream.theatre in July.
They are cabaret musical A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad), Apphia Campbell’s acclaimed Black Is the Color of My Voice, Friend (The One With Gunther) inspired by TV comedy Friends, and Mark Farrelly’s biographical show, Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope.
The four productions were curated by Olivier Award-winning producer James Seabright and filmed last month before socially distanced audiences at Wilton’s Music Hall in east London.
Seabright said: “Thanks to a grant from the Cultural Recovery Fund we were able to give work to dozens of freelance actors, creatives and technicians, to record these wonderful productions and now present them to a global audience via stream.theatre.”
A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad) will be streamed 1 to 4 July and will then be available on demand from 5 to 11 July. This hilarious cabaret musical about depression and how it’s OK not to be OK has sold out seasons in London and Edinburgh and is due to be staged Off-Broadway.
Commissioned by Hull-based company Silent Uproar, it was written by double Olivier Award winner Jon Brittain, who directed Baby Reindeer and wrote Rotterdam, with music and musical direction by Matthew Floyd Jones of cabaret duo Frisky and Mannish. It features Madeleine MacMahon, Sophie Clay and Ed Yelland.
It is directed by Alex Mitchell, with a team including movement director Jon Beney, sound designer Ed Clarke, lighting designer Adam Foley, set and costume designer Amy Jane Cook and costume supervisor Liz Dees.
Black Is the Color of My Voice, written and performed by Apphia Campbell, will be streamed from 8 to 11 July and will then be available on demand from 12 to 18 July. A winner of a Fringe First award, the solo show has played sell-out seasons in Shanghai, New York, Edinburgh and London at Trafalgar Studios, Wilton’s Music Hall and Crazy Coqs.
Inspired by the life of singer Nina Simone, it follows a successful jazz singer and civil rights activist seeking redemption after the untimely death of her father. She reflects on the journey that took her from a young piano prodigy destined for a life in the service of the church to a renowned jazz vocalist at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement.
It is directed by Arran Hawkins and Nate Jacobs, with lighting design by Clancy Flynn and sound design by Tom Lishman. It is presented by Seabright Productions with Play The Spotlight.
Covering all 236 episodes of hit 90s TV show Friends, solo show Friend (The One With Gunther) will be streamed from 15 to 18 July and will then be available on demand from 19 to 25 July. In one hour, all 10 series of Friends are told through the eyes of coffee shop barista Gunther, written and performed by comic actor Brendan Murphy. It is directed by Hamish Macdougall.
Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope is a glorious, truthful and uplifting celebration of a genuinely unique human being and of the urgent necessity to be yourself. Written and performed by Mark Farrelly and directed by Linda Marlowe, it will be streamed from 22 to 25 July and then be available on demand from 26 July to 1 August.
The show depicts the legendary Quentin Crisp at two distinct phases of his extraordinary life: firstly in the late 1960s in his filthy Chelsea flat and then in New York in the 1990s. The older Quentin, finally embraced by society, regales the audience with his sharply observed, hard-earned philosophy on how to have a lifestyle. The creative team also includes sound designer Tom Lishman.
Tickets for all the shows cost £12 plus a £3 transaction fee.
