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THIS JUST IN...

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​Three years after its last stage outing, The Trials of Harvey Matusow is returning to the Stroud Theatre Festival – by popular demand following a one-off performance as part of the Men Without Friends triptych back in 2017 (see pic there!).
Owing to the unique conditions of the time, the 3 performances, like many of the offerings at this year’s festival, will take place outdoors, in the walled garden at the Museum in the Park. 
Stroud Theatre Festival runs 2-4 Oct. More here. 

FAITH REWARDED

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Keeping the Faith, the lockdown web series that marks the return of super-keen traffic warden Kevin “Quint” McBride (as seen in High Vis), has been honoured with an OnComm Award – bestowed by the people who, in normal, theatregoing times, are responsible for giving out the Off-West End Awards, or Offies.

Written, shot, edited and posted on Youtube at the height of the Covid lockdown, Keeping the Faith explores the great man’s feelings about being confined to home when, in his view, there’s an absolute pandemic of parking abuse going on out there on the streets. There’s more info here, and you can watch the complete series here.

A PAIR OF QUINTS!

Kevin “Quint” McBride, traffic warden anti-hero of the Cohenian monodrama High Vis, made his earliest appearances as part of the online comedy project Vlog Roll, and though he’s not been so much of an online presence in recent years, there’s now something of a Quint glut – at least on Youtube, where two interpretations of the great man are now vying for attention.

Shot three years back but only just making its presence known online, Autumn Patrol is a 5-minute short in which the role of Quint is taken up by Ross Gurney-Randall. The film finds Quint in thoughtful mode, reflecting ruefully, as he pounds his daily beat, on the death of summer and the inexorable advance of pay-by-phone parking. 
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Some may like to compare and contrast with Bohemian Travesty, a short piece of vloggery in which Quint, as played by his creator, holds forth on what he perceives to be the long-term damage wrought by Freddie Mercury’s finest moment... 

WORKS
IN PROGRESS

Blood is currently being sweated on two stage projects.
One is the musical Say What You See, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Emperor’s New Clothes. As well as writing book, music and lyrics for that, Robert is at third-draft stage with a play called Little Things That Keep Us Together.
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Deriving its title from a Scott Walker song, Little Things... takes its inspiration from authorial memories of an obnoxious art teacher encountered at prep school in the early ’70s; a defining recollection is of handing in a picture at the end of a lesson and having it torn in two before his eyes. A challenging medium, it may be argued, in which for the artist to work – but small potatoes, in fact, for one whose previous protagonists have included traffic wardens, murderous kings and McCarthyite supergrasses. 

Completion on Little Things That Keep Us Together is expected some time towards the early summer of the year AD 2020.
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Robert Cohen can be Twittered at both @cohenbobbycoco and @HighVisTheShow