|
Theater
Dec 29, 2007 12:04:09 GMT -5
Post by Ace on Dec 29, 2007 12:04:09 GMT -5
I looked for the older topic then realized it was lost in the purge. I saw this on a blog and couldn't resist posting it. Pierce HAS discussed this play in a few interviews -- including the huge fake phallus and milking the nanny goat. ;D I saw Pierce Brosnan nakedI went back to Edinburgh with my wife, who hadn’t been in the city since we were involved with a Celtic rock opera at the Fringe many years ago. It’s a beautiful city with normal licensing laws (unlike in the past when you couldn’t get a drink after ten o’clock). I could still remember the venue for the show we put on there, together with the Pip Simmons theatre group, a rock band with a blistering brass section, Maggie Nicols - the jazz singer - and a cast of acrobats and dancers. Leading man was a young Pierce Brosnan - who appeared for most of the show naked in the company of a goat. It was called Pucka-Ri which means ‘Goat King’ and was written by my then musical partner Mick Flynn and me and other writers and musicians whose names I cannot now remember. It was a Celtic ring cycle and Pierce Brosnan (no one would have imagined then he would become James Bond) played the part of One Man who is brought to the underworld to undergo a rebirth by copulating with Midwinter Child (the wardrobe department really went to town on an artificial phallus - well, it did have to be seen and recognised at the back of the hall!). I have just glanced through Pierce’s autobiography and he mentions Pucka-Ri but the earlier trial version we put on at the Oval House theatre. He doesn’t mention the Edinburgh Festival or being naked night after night. And I wouldn’t have expected him to mention me or Mick Flynn. So, what was the future James Bond superstar actor like in the flesh? Well, anyone who wants to know can ask in the comment section.
|
|
|
Theater
Dec 29, 2007 13:52:25 GMT -5
Post by Lauryn on Dec 29, 2007 13:52:25 GMT -5
I looked for the older topic then realized it was lost in the purge. I saw this on a blog and couldn't resist posting it. Pierce HAS discussed this play in a few interviews -- including the huge fake phallus and milking the nanny goat. ;D Alright, so why hasn't anyone asked? Or are you all waiting for me to do it? LOL!
|
|
|
Theater
Dec 29, 2007 14:06:48 GMT -5
Post by Ace on Dec 29, 2007 14:06:48 GMT -5
I looked for the older topic then realized it was lost in the purge. I saw this on a blog and couldn't resist posting it. Pierce HAS discussed this play in a few interviews -- including the huge fake phallus and milking the nanny goat. ;D Alright, so why hasn't anyone asked? Or are you all waiting for me to do it? LOL! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That question will not come from me - at least not on a public post. Ace
|
|
|
Theater
Dec 29, 2007 15:24:46 GMT -5
Post by Lauryn on Dec 29, 2007 15:24:46 GMT -5
Alright, so why hasn't anyone asked? Or are you all waiting for me to do it? LOL! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That question will not come from me - at least not on a public post. Ace Do I have to do everything around here myself? And he said my e mail wouldn't be posted! Liar! Who knows what sort of responses I'll get to that? What's that line from Rhett to Scarlett about learning to live without a good reputation? I may soon find out!
|
|
|
Theater
Jan 4, 2008 17:12:24 GMT -5
Post by Lauryn on Jan 4, 2008 17:12:24 GMT -5
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That question will not come from me - at least not on a public post. Ace Do I have to do everything around here myself? And he said my e mail wouldn't be posted! Liar! Who knows what sort of responses I'll get to that? I feel so much better now that I realise my e mail really wasn't showing. This was basically a dare. I never really thought I'd get an answer, let alone one that was, um, fairly specific. I just thought he would write back, "go away, you shameless hussy!" LOL! tallstories.wordpress.com/2007/12/30/did-naked-pierce-brosnan-measure-up-to-007/If he is hoping to shop a screenplay to the SMA's production company, he might have been a bit more extravagant in his praise. <wink>Then again, he does have a point about the goat. The whole post is pretty hilarious, actually.
|
|
|
Theater
Jan 7, 2008 12:20:08 GMT -5
Post by sparklingblue on Jan 7, 2008 12:20:08 GMT -5
He could really have flattered PB a little more, if he really expects to pitch a script to him. Otherwise that post was a hoot! ;D ;D ;D
|
|
|
Theater
Jan 7, 2008 14:23:45 GMT -5
Post by Ace on Jan 7, 2008 14:23:45 GMT -5
W.C. Fields did say never work with animals, but I don't think even he contemplated the full ramifications off too close proximity to a nanny goat in the buff. ;D The idea that the the BBC filmed part of this and that it might be in their archives somewhere boggles the mind.
|
|
|
Theater
Aug 28, 2010 3:09:20 GMT -5
Post by Ace on Aug 28, 2010 3:09:20 GMT -5
Found this fabulous B&W photo of Pierce and Ciaran Hinds at CH's website from the Glascow Citz Theatre's production of Painter's Palace of PleasureAlong with longer reviews: Painter's Palace of Pleasure by John Ford/John Webster Review by Cordelia Oliver, Plays and Players, May 1978There is no mystery about the title of the Jacobean epic devised, designed and directed by Philip Prowse to end the season at Citizens' Theatre. Painter's Palace of Pleasure refers to William Painter's 16th-century compendium of 'pleasant histories and excellent nouvels... chosen and selected out of diverse good and commended authors' - a bran tub in which contemporary dramatists delved freely and found treasure. Romeo and Juliet are there, with Titus Andronicus; also - and more to the point in the present context - the tale of 'the unfortunate marriage of a gentleman called Antonio Bologna with the Duchess of Malfi and the pitiful death of them both'. In fact it is with Webster's heroine that Prowse began; with a sense that 'somehow, when you do Malfi, you feel as though you are starting something in the middle. You know nothing about this woman, not even her name. But if you didn't have the deaths at the end of The White Devil you could take The Duchess of Malfi as a legitimate continuation to the first play. Some editor once had the same idea - I forget who - but at any rate I'm not the first.' From there it was a short step to seeing a possible beginning in the overtly incestuous relationship between the brother and sister, Giovanni and Annabella, of John Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore - the one importunate and unbalanced, the other wilful and voluptuous. So, Painter's Palace of Pleasure (that title, says Prowse, is used much in the same off-hand spirit as Shakespeare's Twelfth Night or What You Will) is a compression of the three revenge tragedies into one - or rather into two parts called respectively, The Harlot and The Spy, Giovanni is the brother throughout, Vittoria the sister. The text is Ford and Webster unadulterated, devoid of sub-plots, cut and used with a freedom which has infuriated some purists: without reason, surely, the exercise being entirely in the spirit of the period in question. What Philip Prowse has supplied is an idea plus the ability to realise a visual conception of unusual power and completeness. What he and his company offer is imagination and vitality, and the kind of physical assurance that carries conviction even in the most violent situations. It ought to be said, however, that this is far from being a gory presentation: mostly the blood is in the mind, and that makes it doubly impressive. In reviewing Citizens' productions one inevitably starts with the mise-en-scene. Here it's a forbiddingly bleak enclosure, as though part of some gaunt, Romanesque palazzo; a space which you see as blind and sealed-off until several entrances reveal themselves - immensely tall slits silently opening and closing (the perceptive may have recognised this as the Summit Conference set transformed; also that Prowse has likewise waved his wand over certain costumes from former productions - thus does Citizens' produce marvels within its budget). This white space dislimbs, contracts and darkens at will, carrying the smell of intrigue, eavesdropping and malice in the oppressive black walls and heavy furniture that slide in and out as scene follows scene. The ambiance is inescapably Jacobean, but in passing, wasn't there a hint of Poe in all that dense black velvet? And I wonder whether, as the chalk-faced, ravaged, vitriolic Isabella ('Are all these ruins of my former beauty laid out for a whore's triumph?'), Pauline Moran's resemblance to Bette Davis as Gloriana in decrepitude was more than coincidence. Gerry Jenkinson's wizardry with lighting contrived splendidly Baroque modelling on faces and heav drapes. (I remember in particular Ciarán Hinds's wolfish profile as Giovanni, Julia Blalock's smouldering Vittoria, and Robert David MacDonald's icily cruel Cardinal, pallid and emaciated in vast, flaming robes) as well as momentary magical changes like the sinister silhouette effect with which Prowse obviated all danger of disastrous laughter at the moment when the dead Antonio's bloody hand is suddenly produced. The various ghosts, too, were well managed, materialising chillingly to an accompaniment of tolling reverberations. If this composite play was first of all concerned with lust, jealousy and revenge between a brother and sister, both of whom think first and only of self's immediate satisfaction, it was equally about the swift and ruthless ways in which a powerful establishment moves in and engineers events to its own ends. The Church, the arch-manipulator, is personified by the Cardinal (later Pope Paul IV) with the red eyes of Luciver and long fastidious fingers. No-one deserves sympathy, not even Vittoria, selfish, voluptuously beautiful termagant as Julia Blalock plays her - except maybe for the spirit with which, being arraigned by the Church, she defends herself. ' . . . beauty and gay clothes, a merry heart, And a good stomach to a feast are all, All the poor crimes that you can charge me with: In faith my lord you might go pistol flies, The sport would be more noble.' But pity, that is, perhaps, even for such as the warped Flamineo/Giovanni; and certainly for Bosola, Webster's omnipresent 'intelligencer' here blended with Vasques and Lodovico from the earlier plays ('I do haunt you still' came across with fresh meaning). But Peter Jonfield, effectively sallow and wary, somehow just failed to encompass the true ambivalence of this archetypal malcontent. From The Stage, April 6, 1978, by Ossia TrillingFor its last production of the season until the end of April Glasgow Citizens' is presenting an unusual theatrical collage, the brain-child of director-designer Philip Prowse, that he has called Painter's Palace of Pleasure, William Painter's Palace of Pleasure (1566), a collection of Italian tales in English translation, furnished the Elizabethans and Jacobeans with some of the plots of their gory melodramas. The present entertainment comprises two full-length plays performed jointly nightly at weekends and separately on consecutive evenings before that. It consists of a composite version of the three play, that Prowse had previously designed for Citizens', the last of which he also directed, namely Ford's Tis Pity She's A Whore and Webster's two revenge dramas of The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. The common factor is the incest story between a brother and a sister and this explains with unarguable consistency by making Annabelle, Vittoria and The Duchess one and the same person, whom Prowse calls Vittoria throughout, the otherwise seemingly unmotivated cruelties inflicted on the unhappy female protagonist by the sadistic siblings who either desire her themselves or seek to keep her away or to part her from those she loves. Part of the evening's fun, for the cognoscenti, comes from trying to trace the original sources of the successive elements in the new plot, and part from identifying the pastiche linking passages which stem from the pen of Robert David MacDonald, here seen for the first time in a speaking role: that of the sinister sibling Cardinal who becomes Pope and plots the removal of all who try to thwart his schemes. Glasgow Citizens' has rarely equalled its high standard of stylised acting and polished verse-speaking. The 40 odd roles in the three original plays, now reduced to 15, are played with uninhibited Jacobean panache by the company throughout the four and a half hour of this epic marathon performance, by none with such physical and vocal bravura as by Julia Blalock as Vittoria and Jill Spurrier als her attendant Cariola, while Garry Cooper's conspiratorial Friar, Ciarán Hinds' heroic Giovanni, Pierce Brosnan as Vittoria's lover Brachiano, Angela Chadfield's sex-mad Julia, Pauline Moran's tearful Isabella and Peter Jonfield's time-serving Bosola give them solid support. The white-brick floor-motif is continued into the two-sided angled decor that occupies the same floor area and afford the identical tall entrances that Prowse used to such dramatic effect in his previous production of Summit Conference and here, once again. Gerry Jenkinson's lighting is superbly imaginative.
|
|
|
Theater
Aug 28, 2010 12:25:49 GMT -5
Post by SecondWind on Aug 28, 2010 12:25:49 GMT -5
The idea that the the BBC filmed part of this and that it might be in their archives somewhere boggles the mind. Looks like one of the people involved in the play, uploaded a clip on YouTube
|
|
|
Theater
Aug 28, 2010 13:21:23 GMT -5
Post by Ace on Aug 28, 2010 13:21:23 GMT -5
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The 70s really were their own special time. Is that Pierce imitating the goat and is that him later almost naked on stage and later under the goat mask? Why is the guy with camera obsessed with the women - even if one is naked - I want a close up of the guy with the hairy chest and the goat head !
|
|
|
Theater
Aug 28, 2010 14:28:06 GMT -5
Post by SecondWind on Aug 28, 2010 14:28:06 GMT -5
Is that Pierce imitating the goat and is that himlater almost naked on stage and later under the goat mask? Yes, I think that's all him... Wicked!
|
|
|
Theater
Aug 28, 2010 18:19:59 GMT -5
Post by Lauryn on Aug 28, 2010 18:19:59 GMT -5
Yep. Either I just ate the brown acid or it’s 1973! Not a bad trip, though, really, if the hairy chap with the (so we hear) giant phallus would stand up and show all! Maybe Axe-Wielding Woman is giving him second thoughts. What a great find! Ditto, the Glasgow Citz pics and reviews. The SMA’s brilliant career does contain multitudes, eh? I wonder what PB and Ciaran Hinds chatted about on the set of “Salvation Boulevard”?
PB: That could have been you, with a bit of luck. Starkers, with a giant phallus, and women wearing leather and sparkly pasties hoppin’ about on stage.
CH: Bastard.
Isn’t that Pierce’s own lavender shirt in those “Salvation Boulevard” pics?
|
|
|
Theater
Dec 17, 2011 20:48:54 GMT -5
Post by Ace on Dec 17, 2011 20:48:54 GMT -5
A new post by David Callinan with a longer version of the story and a very loose tie-in to his new thriller. www.davidcallinan.com/Blog/View/i-saw-pierce-brosnan-naked-and-lived-to-tell-the-taleI saw Pierce Brosnan naked and lived to tell the tale11th November 2011 Yes, it is true. I did see Pierce Brosnan naked, more or less every night and in public because I was working with him at the time but it was some considerable time ago. Before I ever had the notion of writing a book or a screenplay I was heavily involved in music - what is now called folk-rock or an even newer, voguish moniker, folk-psych. It was also the early days of the Edinburgh Festival when the pubs closed early and you couldn't get a drink for love nor money after about ten o'clock. I had co-written an ambitious Celtic rock-opera called 'Pucka-Ri' (English translation: Goat King). I was playing in various bands but had teamed with my old oppo, Mick Flynn, to write the music and the songs and the 'Libretto'. We found a producer/director, teamed up with a small theatre group, hired a ten-piece rock band, a brilliant jazz singer, Maggie Nichols and assorted acrobats, jugglers, goats, dogs. 'Pucka-Ri' needed a lead actor to play the part of 'One Man' in this Celtic ring cycle that sees him descend into the Celtic underworld, undergo a form of redemption, copulate with 'Midwinter Child' and be reborn as man and spirit in pure harmony with the world and the Gods. Enter a young Pierce Brosnan. We rehearsed at the Oval House theatre where he kept his pants on before transferring to Edinburgh where 'Pucka-Ri' became one of the hits of the Fringe. 'One Man' was accompanied by a goat (a real one), but it turned out to be a nanny so Pierce had to milk her every night. HIs first entrance was stone butt naked leading the goat in through the audience. He spent a long time giving the audience a good eyeful before the script had the good sense to cover up his dangly bits. This was well before 'Hair' or the liberated theatre of nudity that followed and, I can tell you, a naked Pierce Brosnan holding a goat on a leash caused gasps of astonishment and admiration. And no, I am not going to fall into the trap of blabbing about the size of his organ. That would be a step too far and very unccol. When the Festival was over I gave Pierce a lift back down to London in my beat up old van. There was little to suggest what he might become. I was certainly a fan of James Bond books but never in a million years could I see him playing that part although he did have genuine charisma and was clearly ambitious. It would nice to think that I modelled my protagonist in 'The Immortality Plot', Mike Delaney, on the Pierce I knew briefly but I didn't. I can't imagine the former US government assassin, Hong Police enforcer and esoteric monk with blistering martial art skills striding naked through an audience with or without a goat. ===================================================== Buck naked - sans fake phallus - striding through an audience with a goat. I'd say, more Julian Noble than Bond. Hair debuted in 1968 in NYC - years earlier - but I wonder what year it premiered in London?
|
|
|
Theater
Feb 25, 2013 21:50:42 GMT -5
Post by Ace on Feb 25, 2013 21:50:42 GMT -5
Ovalhouse still squaring up to the challenge of politicsBy: Simon Tait Ovalhouse is 50, and it really ought not to be. It should either have been closed down, defunded or it should simply have run out of steam 25 years ago by all the norms for agitprop theatre. It lost all its funding once when a Romeo & Juliet at which a glimpse of ankle was allowed outraged a local parson who complained to the charity which was funding what it thought was a boys’ club; the police with dogs raided it when a group trying to give young black lads guidance in getting jobs had clumsily called itself the Brixton Black Panthers, and the director of Ovalhouse was arrested and fined; twenty years ago the Arts Council of Great Britain was in danger of losing faith when the venue had become a chaotic co-operative with no discernible output. But it has not only survived, it’s stronger than ever. Why? Ovalhouse was jerked out of its boys’ club mode by the actor and youth worker Peter Oliver who insisted that performance and expression was the way out for the kids of Stockwell, not camping with Oxford undergraduates. You’ll know the names of people that started there: David Hare, Steven Berkoff, Pierce Brosnan, Mike Figgis, Salman Rushdie, Athol Fugard, Tim Roth – who had literally come in off the street. His opening production was the first kitchen sink drama, A Taste of Honey, acted and directed by people who lived in the kitchen rather than distant middle-class RADA-trained actors observing from their lounges. The place took its agitprop role without realising it, as the birthplace of gay theatre, women’s lib theatre, black theatre, and while you probably won’t know the titles of the plays they put on in the 70s and 80s, you’ll know the names of some of the people that started there: David Hare, Steven Berkoff, Pierce Brosnan, Mike Figgis, Salman Rushdie, Athol Fugard. Tim Roth, who had literally come in off the street, recently sent his son Alex along to find out how to be an actor. So the history is eminent, which does not necessarily mean the present will follow suit. Yet when the arts council was cutting everyone by an average 15%, Ovalhouse actually had its subsidy increased, is adept at fundraising and is even planning a move to a purpose-built venue in Brixton because its home opposite The Oval cricket ground is too small for everything an arts organisation with a £1 million annual turnover needs to do. There is still agitprop, politically inspired theatre, and Hare continues to write it, but for the National Theatre now. Lucy Prebble’s Enron of 2009 is undoubtedly agit prop, but coming out of Chichester Festival Theatre before going to the West End and Broadway. Every festival now has a fringe where provocative new work gets a run out, provided there are no more than two characters and a chair, and there are pop-up venues in many high streets often offering free performances. The subject matter has changed, and Ovalhouse has changed too. The drama is no longer about gays and feminists, such badges and demarcations are frowned on now. Ovalhouse is taking performances that address youth unemployment, migration, social exclusion and the drug culture to church halls, the pavements of south London and even bus tops, plays that have had their scripts workshopped, their characters deeply analysed, their stage directions refined and their teching crafted by experts. Agitprop is still with us and professionally made, but it’s not so much on our big stages any more as in our communities, and nobody does it better than Ovalhouse.
|
|
|
Post by eaz35173 on May 8, 2013 9:59:54 GMT -5
Found this on Tumblr. Anyone know what it's from?
|
|
|
Theater
May 8, 2013 11:58:00 GMT -5
Post by Ace on May 8, 2013 11:58:00 GMT -5
Great find. It looks like a stage photo. If so, I think it would be from from 1980 where Pierce appeared at the Palace Theater, Westcliff, England, in Brian Clark's award-winning play, "Whose Life Is It Anyway?" as paraplegic Ken Harrison. History of the play: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whose_Life_Is_It_Anyway%3F_%28play%29Richard Dreyfuss was in the 1981 film.
|
|
|
Theater
May 8, 2013 12:26:17 GMT -5
Post by rosafermu on May 8, 2013 12:26:17 GMT -5
Thanks so much.
|
|
|
Theater
May 8, 2013 13:20:55 GMT -5
Post by juljustik on May 8, 2013 13:20:55 GMT -5
|
|
|
Theater
May 8, 2013 13:33:10 GMT -5
Post by Ace on May 8, 2013 13:33:10 GMT -5
Oooh, do I win a prize for guessing correctly?
|
|
|
Theater
May 8, 2013 13:44:33 GMT -5
Post by eaz35173 on May 8, 2013 13:44:33 GMT -5
I knew I could count on someone here to know the answer!! Thanx Ace & juljustik!!
|
|