Resident Alien - New End Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
TO celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Quentin Crisp, Bette Bourne returns to the London stage – to Hampstead’s New End Theatre – with his acclaimed, multi award-winning performance in Tim Fountain’s Resident Alien.
The ten-week season runs from February 3 (previews from January 28) to April 5, 2009.
Based on Quentin Crisp’s life and writings, Resident Alien is set in Crisp’s legendary one-room filthy New York apartment. It’s there, while waiting for the arrival of yet more visitors, that 91-year-old Crisp reflects on life, the century he has lived through and subjects as diverse as Princess Diana, Oprah Winfrey and oral sex.
Resident Alien was written with Crisp’s full co-operation and with exclusive use of his New York Diaries, and provides a fascinating insight into the wit and wisdom of the original English “stately homo”.
Crisp was reluctantly born Denis Charles Pratt on Christmas Day, 1908. In the mid 1960s, he uttered a few words on radio and was subsequently invited to write his autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant. In 1975, it was filmed for television and starred John Hurt. A sequel for ITV1, An Englishman in New York, also starring John Hurt, has just completed filming.
Crisp, who described himself on his tax forms as a retired waif, died in 1999 in Manchester, England, just as Resident Alien reached the stage.
Bourne’s most recent theatre credits include Rock (as Rock Hudson’s agent) at the Oval House; Vortex (for which he won the Clarence Derwent Award) at the Donmar Warehouse; Pericles at the Lyric Hammersmith; Skin of Our Teeth at the Young Vic; and Romeo and Juliet (as the Nurse) at Shakespeare’s Globe.
Bourne is also famous for his celebrated queer comedy ensemble Bloolips, with whom he won two OBIES. He received his third OBIE for Resident Alien.
Writer/director Fountain’s other plays include Julie Burchill Is Away, Hotboi, Rock and stage adaptations of Toby Young’s How To Lose Friends and Alienate People and the Oscar-winning movie Midnight Cowboy.
Resident Alien premiered at London’s Bush Theatre with Bette Bourne in the starring role in November 1999. In January 2001, the production transferred to New York where it played a sell-out three-month season and won two Obie Awards for performance and design. Since then, it has been seen at the Edinburgh Festival, and on tour in the UK, Australia and America.
Tickets: £18.
Times: Tuesday to Saturday at 8.30pm, Sunday matinee at 3.30pm.
For more information call the box office on 0870 033 2733 or visit the website.