The
Press
on
Starving Artists Theatre Company
Don’t Forget Me
Mark Pinkosh, star of Starving Artists’ one-man exploration of the
Hollywood myth, is himself a product of it; he’s worked with Jim Carrey on Man
in the Moon and more recently on Sigourney Weaver’s Heartbreakers. Likewise,
his long-term partner and writer/director of Don’t Forget Me, Godfrey
Hamilton, lives in Hollywood and is a self-confessed lover of The Dream. And
both are also earnest members of the part of society that the American
Dreamers still prefer not to talk about.
So while there’s certainly a
deep cynicism here, definitely a sense that all is not as it should be in
Tinseltown, there’s also an unrequited affection on the part of Hamilton and
Pinkosh for Hollywood itself.
Pinkosh plays Angus, a
successful film producer, as brash and jaded as they come, and sick to death
of the high pressure, air-kissing Hollywood world. For Chip, a young wannabe,
the bubble has yet to burst, and as the two embark on a flirtatious
friendship, Pinkosh flips schizophrenically between them, delivering a
performance so intense that at times it’s difficult not to see two people on
stage.
Thankfully free of camp clichés,
Hamilton’s portrait of homosexuality is as honest and unsentimental as his
depiction of the Hollywood dream itself; this is as much a piece about a love
affair as it is about sexuality. Faultlessly performed, the potency and
inevitable futility of Angus and Chip’s relationship is combined with
Hamilton’s adoration for Hollywood. There’s no sense of infatuation here,
Hamilton is evidently ‘in love’ with Hollywood, which means loving it for all
its faults, not least its bigotry. The result is a brilliantly conceived
production, one that succeeds in being utterly sincere, deeply moving and a
worthy testament to the Dream Machine.
--Olly Lassman, The List (Edinburgh and Glasgow) Events Guide.
…In a hugely entertaining 75 minutes, it was impossible to take one’s eyes
off Mark Pinkosh, so funny and
powerful was his performance. He moved with ease between the characters,
shifting from bitter reflection to wide-eyed innocence in a split second. He
avoided the trap of turning this most substantial play into a series of
linked monologues…
…as a world premiere, Don’t Forget
Me had none of the glamour of Hollywood, but it certainly had much, much
more substance.
- Kenneth Spiers, The Mail on Sunday (Scotland)
SIMPLY UNFORGETTABLE…
…laced with the industry-speak, anecdotes and apocrypha of a true
cinephile, Don’t Forget Me leaves us in no doubt about its creators’ undying
love for Hollywood, even as they are condemning its rapacious whoremongery.
- Andrew Burnet, The Scotsman
Holding Back the Ocean
(Director: Colin Watkeys)
"Tennessee Williams would have fallen for this show and its two
smashing performers"
--Irving Wardle, Independent on Sunday (UK)
"A seductive treat for everyone"
--Jane Edwardes, Time Out (London)
"Let's hope that the Starving Artists Company can remain a prophet in
its own country, while continuing to achieve an honored reputation elsewhere.
It has a special place here, concentrating on original and off-beat works.
Honolulu should be big enough in heart and pocketbook to support both Evita
and a two-man show like Holding Back the Ocean.
The strengths of the play lie in the character of Alex, compellingly and
poignantly portrayed by Mark Pinkosh, in the handsome and graceful dancer
Ryan Keola Brown and in the simplicity of the production."
--Jerome Landfield, Honolulu
Star-Bulletin
Sleeping With You
(Director: David Prescott)
Nominee: The Independent (UK) Theatre Award
"Mark Pinkosh--utterly engaging and brilliantly skillful.
Godfrey Hamilton--writing that is passionate, lyrical and compelling."
--Paul Taylor, The
Independent (UK)
"A performance of breathtaking range and subtlety by Mark Pinkosh combines
with Godfrey Hamilton's immaculately wrought script. Compelling, moving,
passionate--absolutely stunning."
--Sue Wilson, The List Magazine
(Edinburgh & Glasgow)
"The most brilliant one-man performance. Incredible and profoundly
moving"
--Jackie Glone, The Herald
(Glasgow)
"Critic's Pick of the Week - Mark Pinkosh commands the stage with
rare grace, ease, and cumulative power"
--Ellen Krout-Hasegawa, LA
Weekly
Kissing Marianne
(Director: David Prescott)
"Starving Artists are an unlikely pairing--the grammar school lad
from Southend and the easy-going Hawaiian-raised Mark Pinkosh. The dialogue
in Kissing Marianne is between someone who is coming from the
heart and one coming from the head. Hamilton himself feels that contrast acutely;
"We Brits are taught to live in our heads. In the States, I’m expected
to engage on a more emotional level. We need both. We Brits inhabit our
skulls a little too much, while Americans can live in their emotions to the
point of indulgence. Both are dangerous. We need balance. The play is about
trying to find that balance." In another sense, and although both the
characters are American, it is about the grammar schoolboy freeing himself
from British strictures. "Mark rescued me from the class system as well
as from living in my head too much. I was a Southend boy who was taught his
place in the scheme of things. My education was abruptly terminated when my
parents died, when I was a teenager. I'm largely self-taught. In England, if
you want to write and haven't been to a university or you aren’t a
card-carrying member of the working class, God help you! I remember asking my
dad as a child, `Dad, what class am I?' That's not a question any child
should be asking, ever. And what's more bizarre is that my Dad would actually
think about it and answer 'Lower middle.'" Kissing Marianne
is also a love poem to Marianne Faithfull. "She was always a great
inspiration. Never a great singer, but possessed of a tremendous honesty in
everything she's done. Her performances are a dramatized process of
self-revelation which I find very touching."'
--interview with Carole Woddis, What's On in
London magazine
"Warm, lyrical, gentle. All the epithets that normally greet shows by
Starving Artists apply to their latest offering.
The great strength of Starving Artists is that in their plays love between
men is a given, not an issue"
--Nick Curtis, London Evening
Standard
Road Movie
(Director: Lorenzo Mele)
"Magnificent"
--Ian Shuttleworth, Financial
Times
"Monumental"
--Jeremy Kingston, The Times
(London)
"A tour de force of acting and writing"
--Philadelphia Inquirer
"Powerful and tender--a first-class piece of writing given the finest
of fully-felt solo performances."
--Catherine Lockerbie, The
Scotsman
"Mark Pinkosh soars in Road Movie "
--Miami Herald
"Vivid, extraordinary, and very funny"
--Time Out, London
Viper's Opium
(Director: Lorenzo Mele)
"Godfrey Hamilton's text is every bit as brilliantly funny and perceptively
touching as Road Movie. Truthful, touching, breathlessly tempered with theatrical
skill."
--The Irish Times
"What a joy to watch two actors at the top of their game! A
rollercoaster of an evening--all this and a cracking soundtrack too!"
--The Glasgow Herald
"Godfrey Hamilton of Starving Artists Theatre Company invites us to
leave behind the Los Angeles of gleaming hilltop haciendas, plastic surgery
and personal trainers. Instead, we wander into a dodgy downtown diner, catch
a movie in the afternoon, kick up some leaves in the park and find Cricket
and Curtis. At first glance you'd take them for two thirtysomething friends
with hearts full of hope and heads full of dreams. But look a little closer,
and you'll see a couple of tortured souls sinking fast in a city where dreams
are lost under layers of desert dust and hope is stuck in traffic.
Cricket (Kathryn Howden) is an outspoken blast of sunshine, a recovering
alcoholic who wants to help everyone but herself. Nervous, febrile Curtis (Mark
Pinkosh) is gay, HIV positive and also a recovering alcoholic. He just needs
acceptance. In each other they have found kindred spirits. They share a love
of old movies and junk food, a conviction that one day their prince will
come, and a deep-seated self-loathing. But the closer they get the more they
are forced to revisit the bits of themselves that have been drowning in drink
for far too long.
Godfrey Hamilton's characters speak a whip-crack sharp, bourbon-smooth
urban patois. In the monologues and dialogues that make up Viper’s
Opium he has created a devastating, hilarious Irvine Welsh-style
prose poem. Don't miss this fantastically acted journey into the beauty and
ugliness that sit side by side in all our hearts."
--Sara Abdulla, Time Out,
London
Earthquake Weather
(Director: John Tiffany)
"Sometimes harrowing, often stirring, and always powerfully acted,
this is no simple Nineties retelling of Sunset Boulevard. It
leaves you with an uplifting sense of achievement."
--The Scotsman
"A movieland play which explores exile and identity with seismic, gut-wrenching
intensity."
--Scotland on Sunday
"Starving Artists--Trembling with talent! A company synonymous with
Fringe success, its latest production only reinforces its burgeoning
reputation."
--The Stage (UK)
Never-Before-Seen Familiar
(Director: Lorenzo Mele)
"As anyone who has encountered one of Mark Pinkosh and Godfrey Hamilton’s
shows will already know, their performances are always tragic, amusing, soul-searching
and memorable. Never-Before-Seen Familiar is another guaranteed
spellbinder."
--Sarah Jane, City Life
(Manchester)
"Another sharply-observed slice of the American nightmare from the tiny,
internationally touring, award-winning company Starving Artists. Kathryn Howden,
the Scottish actress recently acclaimed in BBC TV's Looking After JoJo,
takes on all the roles in this typically funny-sad and totally
gripping premiere, commissioned as part of the Queerupnorth Festival."
Slowly, Jackson's story unfolds and again reveals the unease and
uncertainty that seems to undermine the lives of those who live in the
wealthiest nation on earth. Howden makes everything burst into life with
quite astonishing clarity."
--Alan Hulme, Manchester Evening News
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