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LUCKY YOU
Mon 1 - Sat 6 September
Mon - Thurs & Sat Eves 7.30pm
Fri Eve 8pm
Thurs/Sat Mat 2.30pm
Press
(Click here for the full review)
(Click here for the full review)
(Click here for the full review)
'A Spirited Adaptation'
". . . Lucky You, a riotous comedy that leaves integrity and dignity mangled by the roadside. It's based on a novel by Carl Hiaasen, the best-selling crime writer whose favoured backdrop is Florida and whose characters make Elmore Leonard lowlifes look like a bunch of Classics professors. The MacGuffin here is a winning lottery ticket, the property of one JoLayne Lucks, a beacon of decency amid a swarm of crooks, scam artists and frauds. On her trail are two disenfranchised rednecks who have unwittingly named their white power movement after a rap group. Again, a handful of actors sustain a vast, motley dramatis personae. The staging is imaginative and the one-liners are razor-sharp . . . "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk - 9 Jul 08
Why go to Edinburgh? Here are 100 reasons
Carl Hiaasens Lucky You Hiaasens novel about an
African-American woman who wins a lottery only to have her winnings stolen by two white-supremacist thugs receives its first stage adaptation in the UK. A lot of talent has piled into this production - and theres music from Loudon Wainwright III. Assembly at Assembly Hall (0131 623 3030), July 31-Aug 25. DC
http://www.guardian.co.uk - 7 Jul 08
Keep an eye out for the Edinburgh Gems
By Lyn Gardner
Lucky You...has a good cast including Alexandra Gilbreath whose 1996 Hedda Gabler is still one of the best Ive seen.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk - 23 Jun 08
Edinburgh festival 2008: 50 events it would be a crime to miss
Times critics select the best that the festival has to offer in comedy, theatre, dance and music
Theatre: Lucky You A lottery win unleashes mayhem in this sharp, funny Carl Hiaasen thriller with music by Loudon Wainwright III. From July 31, Assembly @ Assembly Hall
The Stage - 17 July
Comedy boom is no laughing matter Jon Plowman, former head of comedy at BBC TV, talks to Mark Shenton about his return to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as the co-producer of a new play in a climate dominated by stand-up Just as the West End has finally followed Broadways example of being taken over by musicals at the expense of plays, drama has become an increasingly endangered species in Edinburgh, where comedy shows are now the dominant product. Some 91 pages of this years Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme are billed 'comedy, against just 63 pages for 'theatre. But this year there has been also been an explicit breakaway marketing attempt to brand and separate part of the comedy fringe into its own Edinburgh Comedy Festival, with four leading venues banding together to promote 253 of their shows under this banner.
According to one of their number, William Burdett-Coutts, founder of Assembly: 'The decision to create the festival concept of Edinburgh Comedy Festival was born of a collective desire to protect and nurture all the things that make Edinburgh in August the best cultural destination in the world - in the face of increasing competition from other festivals and ever-rising costs.'There has already been a backlash.
As Tommy Sheppard, proprietor of the Stand comedy club that operates year-round in Edinburgh and also plays a major part during the fringe, told The Times: 'That thing theyve organised is not a festival at all. How can you have a festival when most of the comedians in the city are not part of it? It is an absurdity.' Anthony Alderson, of the Pleasance, points out that comedy is just part of the strand of work his venue promotes. 'It is no secret that the success of comedy at these venues has enabled the support of other work,' he says. 'More than 50% of our programme features theatre, music, musical theatre, dance and childrens show - all equally prominent and vital. If Edinburgh Comedy Festival can generate more audiences and interest in the fringe as a whole, then everyone will benefit.'
Edinburgh is constantly morphing and adapting - this latest initiative is further, more official recognition, of a long-standing economic as well as artistic reality in which the entertainment world functions nowadays. Its all about branding and market share - but is there still room for artistic innovation and original plays? One person who hopes there is, comes from an unlikely, but highly informed place - Jon Plowman, the former head of comedy for BBC TV, where he was responsible for producing and commissioning such hits as Absolutely Fabulous, The Vicar of Dibley, The League of Gentlemen, Gimme Gimme Gimme, The Office, Extras and Little Britain, among numerous others. This year he returns to Edinburgh, where his career began as a student, to co-produce a new play. 'I first went to Edinburgh in 1972 with a very nice guy who now runs The National Portrait Gallery, Sandy Nairne,' he says. 'We helped carry 200lbs of sand up three flights of stairs at the old Traverse for the Polish director Kantor. And I took a play up there called The Peter Pan Man, about JM Barrie. I got a career as a result - so Im going back to Edinburgh this year to see if Ive still got one.' He is teaming up with Katharine DorÉ, formerly of Adventures in Motion Pictures, to offer a rare and hard-fought stage adaptation of a Carl Hiaasen novel, Lucky You. 'Ive always been a fan of Hiaasen - hes a great thriller writer and a wonderful satirist,' says Plowman. 'But hes always been reluctant to allow them to be adapted. He says he has a cupboard full of adaptations that hes turned down, but this one was done by British director, Matthew Francis and a University of South Florida theatre professor Denis Calandra. After they did it there, they got in a van and drove from Tampa with the cast halfway down the Florida Keys to where Hiaasen was living and performed it for an audience that comprised just him, his wife and two sons - and they had a great time, so it persuaded him to let it have a longer life.' Plowman is helping to facilitate that now - and one of his own major artistic contributions was to personally persuade Loudon Wainwright III to write original music for it. 'I just rang him up - he was stuck in a traffic jam in LA - and told him about it. He asked me to send him the book and the script, and then he came back very quickly and said yes, this is risky and dangerous. Ill do it.' That, of course, is what the Edinburgh fringe is all about - taking chances. Plowmans own career has been about taking chances on other peoples talent, so hes used to it and insists theres not a lot of difference between applying those skills to television or the stage. 'A good producer should be the person sitting there who a) is laughing a lot or b) saying I dont understand that joke - is there a way of making it work better? The only difference is that this will have to work in front of an audience every day for 90 minutes, whereas a TV recording can be tidied up afterwards.' The comedy world has often exploited the theatrical one in terms of the talent pool it draws on - and there is also an overlap, at least between TV shows recorded in front of an audience.
'Theyre not unlike a theatre show - you have to make them an experience for the audience too,' says Plowman. So, as he follows in the footsteps of the likes of David Liddiment (former director of programmes for ITV, who went on to become Kevin Spaceys first executive producer at the Old Vic) and Charlie Parsons (co-founder of Planet 24, now co-producer of the West End musical Never Forget), hes determined to make this an Edinburgh experience. 'It feels like an Edinburgh show that is slightly different from anything else - one of those things you long to find there.' Lucky You runs at the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh from July 31 - August 25.