"Saturday night, small town Wales, one pub, one party and three lads stuck with their school reputations - the gimp, the geek and the bully. Their dream - to get the hell out. With a dead cat stuffed through a letterbox, a soupçon of mindless violence and the perfect girl to die for, Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco bristles with the desperately ordinary, the truly extraordinary, and the just plain mad.
Heroic, comic and right up your street..."
Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco
Review
Haymarket Theatre Studio Leicester
I hadn't been to the Haymarket theatre since my Mum last took me there to see Hot Stuff. A sort of Disco/Glam homage made in the days before Gary Glitter was revealed to be a sexual pervert. How ashamed I am now looking back and remembering the rows and rows of adults and children alike stomping our collective foot and singing D'ya wanna be in my gang (current membership1).
Well those days are gone now and Gary is dead, gone to stomp his silver boot in Glam/Pedophile heaven.
Strange then that 10 years later I should find myself once again within the thesbic walls of Leicester's Haymarket theatre to see a production based around disco. Except that Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco isn't about disco anymore than it's about Gary Glitter. No, CGMD is a three act play written by Gary Owen, directed by Vicky Featherstone and performed by three young fellows from Osgriptcymru / Paines Plough in Wales. Each actor does a solo turn which lasts about 40 minutes, with only the simple backdrop of the exterior of a disco for a prop. And in the style of the play Jens Hayley and myself (HoBo John) who all attended the performance shall review each section in turn.
HoBo John's bit
First we are thrust in to the violent world of Crazy Gary himself. Crazy Gary
once the school bully and now the local hardcase, tells us about the
time his beloved disco night was shunned in favour of the 'Fuckin Karaoke'
night, hosted by a shitehawk, much to his disapproval. Gary deals with this
obstacle in the only way he knows how, with intimidation and ultimately,
violence. He unleashes a barrage of foul language and aggression on to the
audience with great effect. It never gets too heavy lest you worry, No matter
how aggro he gets there is always a laugh on the way to balance things out. He
tells the tale of the night he found true love in the form of Mary, his 'Perfect
Chick'. and all the events leading up to it.
Next up we have Jens
Next up we have a bizarre character (wearing a sparkly jacket that would make
Jimmy Saville proud) proclaiming to have the power to reignite love in any dying
romance. Many of us may claim to have such magical powers but only this guy can
do it through the magic of song. Through a series of hilarious situations -
being ejected from the local employment office for looking at the officers tits
when he wanted to read her name badge, belting out the Righteous Brothers
classic "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" to a drunk of lads on a stag
do to save the embarrassment of the stripper, and resorting to shoving a dead
cat into the aforementioned letter box to hide the evidence after it was kicked
against a wall in an argument in the early hours - the audience is
provided with a much needed sense of relief. This is not to say that protagonist
number 1 wasn't funny. A collection of superb
insults and well timed use of swear words made this character seriously funny
but his actions were always violent. Our cabaret singer was never violent, only
frustrated (except when he kicked a cat to death! [ED.]), but as his story
became more bizarre the audience started to question his sanity. Was he mad?
What was his relationship with the bully? What did the postman do with the
squashed cat? and would he sing to my girlfriend? Only part 3 would hold the
answers.
Hayley
Considering the character in the final segment looks like a rampant hormone blokey, it is difficult to accept him as the geek he is cast as. (Hayley obviously fancied him then). As the tragic story reaches its climax, we discover the sordid behind the bike sheds secret which connects all three characters. In short The gimp(2nd character) and the geek were bullied by Crazy Gary as schoolchildren and forced to commit grotesque sexual acts with each other in front of a crowd of onlookers. The gimp would rather have taken a beating but the geek was too scared and preferred to take... well we don't want to spoil that bit for you.
Well to cut a long story short (mainly because I can't read Hayleys handwriting [ED.]) it becomes all too apparent that the classroom hierarchy that existed in school, still exists in the adult lives of the three characters.
The final segment of the play raises the following questions
1.Do only fat twats finish first?
2.Is the Mobile Disco the epitome of all that is evil?
3.will the geek turn in to all the bully despised i.e a twat dressed like a pimp wanabee who just robbed Bow Bangles.
To clear up the above I demand a sequel and if its half as good as CGMD then I'm front row (yeah, letching over bloke number 3 no doubt [ED.]).
HoBo Says. "What does Soupcon mean?"