Directed by Daisy
Campbell, the mesmeric
and massively talented daughter of that unparalleled magician of
alternative
theatre,
Ken
Campbell, the show is replete with amazing characters.
Play One The Storms Howling
Through
Tiflis
Play Two Living On Orion
Play Three The Rainbow Con
Play Four Eye To Eye
Play Five What's Got Into
Them?
Play Six The Key
In The Shredded Cloak
Play Seven The Halva Question
Play Eight The Backlash
Play Nine The Metallic
Onslaught
Play Ten Pure
White
Light
After a prelude in 15th Century
Bavaria, Oliver
Senton as the hero Phil begins his quest for truth and self knowledge
in
a Torquay tool shed with a luscious naked nymphomaniac. It is 1957 and,
after an interlude in Rhodesia, he finds himself in the eccentric,
bohemian
world of Sam Widges, a Soho cafe where his developing enthusiasms for
poetry
and jazz find startling release in an improvised session...
The basic pattern is one of
confusion and reply,
with an endless stream of extraordinary characters appearing to put
Phil
right, take him on to meet others or just haul him into bed. There can
be no conclusion; for our ever evolving hero, there is no ultimate
conclusion
to be reached. At one point he tumbles towards paranoid schizophrenia,
unable to escape from himself and grateful that his wife finds
happiness
with his own best friend. He becomes a magician of love, conducting a
scientifically
beautiful hypnosis trip for an admirer...
After attending a flying saucer
conference
and encountering UFOs in the Brontes' Howarth parsonage, he sets
off to Loch Ness to start up a centre where people can give birth to
themselves.
The location is allegedly haunted by Aleister Crowley and dark forces
throw
both his personal and ideological ambitions into confusion...
Some of the Characters on the
Path
In Soho, there is Billy
McGuinness, the Irish
gypsy orator who claims to be God and has returned to Earth in order to
pick up his long overdue royalties for the great book. King David, a
figure
who exists, as somebody said, somewhere between the worlds of Pinter
and
Gogol, bearing messages from Orion and interrupting his urgent mission
only for cups of tea and raw onions. There is the hapless acid freak
who,
in one of the shows most hilarious episodes, disrupts a cafe with his
psychedelically-inspiculinary
and excretory vaudevillian antics.
The cosmic green grocer who
holds forth on
UFOs with exact lucidity; there is Bhagwan Rajneesh in India, whose
tranquil
instructions are vigorously rejected by Phil. There are knockabout
policemen,
comic Chinese officials, Buckminster Fuller, life-long haystack
dwellers,
Venusians, military art enthusiasts, and a raging landlord
who doesn't have any friends, just
different
classes of enemy.
Dramatising the Adventures and
the Vision of
a Poet across two Decades of Alternative Society.
From Fifteenth Century Bavaria
in another incarnation,
battling with the mysterious Baron...
To the appearance of the poet
on the late-50s
London jazz & poetry, cafe & gallery Bohemian scene - where our
hero has mystical experiences with drugs and is initiated into dianetic
science...
Onwards through travels in the
Middle East
- amidst encounters with relentless bureaucracy - to Paris, where he
meets
with Krishnamurti and the cyberneticist who turns him on to
instantaneous
telepathy...
Then an introduction to
Gurdjeffian teachings
on the possibilities in the
evolution of human consciousness
leads our
hero to...
Finsbury Park - the explosion
of white light.
So awesomely devoid of warmth, the poet earths himself in a Barons
Court
artists commune, doing poetry, readings and acid, ever onwards...
To Summer '67. Now our hero
experiments with
a new way of being - without recourse to ideation, our poet, his wife
and
the ex jazz musician with whom she falls in love...
Amidst tales of
extraterrestrial intelligence
- the Yorkshire flying saucer contactee - UFO sightings by our poet and
close encounters of several kinds...
Then 1968 - convinced that deep
thinking is
the only way to develop the human psyche, the poet gives a public
lecture
to this effect - stating that drugs are being used as an escape from
personal
responsibility rather than facing the way the world is - he attempts to
encourage others to create their art in public...
Into the Seventies - when our
hero receives
a telepathic message to create a hospital where people can give birth
to
themselves. After further UFO communication he discovers Freya, an
Ancient
Atlantean power centre - a commune is formed, the poet teaches weaving,
dervish turning and how to think Phil meets Rachel - falls in
love...
The Baron Returns - years of
struggle, as the
poet meets with tragedy, insanity,injustice...
In search of peace he journeys
to Bhagwan Rajneesh
in India - delves deeper into Scientology - explores the Mystery of
Life
- and comes to understand that life can only become meaningful through
thinking with ones whole being.
"I WAS EXCITED BY YOUR SPIRIT, NOT SUCKED INTO THE DARK VORTEX OF
YOUR
CLIT, KNOW WHAT I MEAN ?"
-Phil Masters (lead
character)
More
about the theater co and the play
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