BAFTA-winning comedian and Olivier-nominated actor ALISTAIR McGOWAN returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with Erik Satie’s-faction; a unique, witty, moving and often surreal show about the unique, witty, moving and often surreal French composer, ERIK SATIE.
Conceived by and starring Alistair, with a script constructed entirely from Satie’s own words, Erik Satie’s-faction is set in 1916, with the composer at his lowest ebb, unable to leave his flat, haunted by his past, fearful for his future and tormented by the loss of his one and only love. Join Alistair as he plays a number of Satie’s well-known, ground-breaking piano pieces and delivers some of his never-before-performed articles and poems.
Best known for his ‘Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes’ (beautiful, simple pieces now regularly heard in adverts and on film soundtracks), Erik Satie was an extraordinary character, almost as famous for his way of life as for his music. He described himself as ‘a pretentious cretin whose music makes people laugh and shrug their shoulders’, and his eccentricities were plentiful. He wore the same outfit for eleven years to save himself time in deciding what to wear, and:
- Ate only white food for a period of time, including shredded bones and the fat of dead animals
- Invented his own branch of the church – and was the only member of it
- Wrote a play in which a man just counts to 260,000
- Let no-one into his flat for the last 27 years of his life
- Drew thousands of designs for fairy-tale castles while living in tiny, barren flats, alone
- Always carried an umbrella to keep off the sun as much as the rain
- Swore himself off love after one failed six-month affair
LISTINGS INFORMATION
Erik Satie’s-faction: His Words, His Music, Your Ears
Venue: Pleasance Forth
Date: 3rd – 28th August
Time: 12.50pm
Box Office: 0131 556 6550
Web: www.wearelivecomedy.com
Alistair will also perform a new stand-up show, 12th Impressions, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from Tuesday 16th August –Sunday 28th August at 6pm in the Gilded Balloon Debating Hall.
Notes to Editors
Alistair McGowan is an impressionist and actor known for his BBC One, BAFTA-winning show, The Big Impression in which his take-offs of David Beckham, Dot Cotton, Richard Madeley and Gary Lineker became legendary. Obsessed with the art of impressions, Alistair constantly updates his charcaters – and has long been admired for his impressions of sports stars, TV stars and political figures alike. His act features the voices of everyone from Gary Barlow to Gary Neville and Boris Johnson to Boris Becker – all done with uncanny accuracy. Amongst a huge number of other television credits, Alistair has featured on Who Do You Think You Are, hosted Have I Got News For You and appeared on Live At The Apollo (BBC One).
Alistair has worked in both theatre and stand-up throughout his career. He played the title role in Jonathan Maitland’s play, An Audience With Jimmy Savile at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe (and previously at The Park Theatre in London) to rave reviews, and in the same year embarked on a UK stand-up tour with Jasper Carrott. In 2014, Alistair played Professor Henry Higgins in a 16-week tour of Pygmalion – alongside Jamie Foreman as Doolittle and Rula Lenska as Mrs Higgins. He has appeared in the West End in Art, as The Emcee in Cabaret, the Mikado in The Mikado and The Dentist in Little Shop of Horrors (for which he received an Olivier nomination).
A life-long Erik Satie fan, Alistair will perform a selection of his absurdist writings at London’s Cadogan Hall on August 1st alongside renowned pianist, Alexandre Tharaud, and singer Jean Delescluse as part of the 2016 BBC Proms.
