INDEPENDENT NEWS

A horse story: BLINKERS and SPURS

Published: Wed 2 Jul 2008 09:24 AM
Media Release
June 29 2008
A horse story: BLINKERS and SPURS
A rock'n'roll romance and a way out Western
When Blinkers was first performed during this year's Wellington Fringe
Festival it caused a sensation - immediately being hailed by audiences
and critics as the most irresistible devised work to emerge in years.
After sell-out seasons in Wellington, Blenheim and Palmerston North,
this delightfully odd love story reinvents itself for Auckland
audiences as A Horse Story: Blinkers and Spurs, at The Basement
(ex-Silo) from July 23 – August 1.
A high-paced two-hander, A Horse Story is a theatrical cocktail of
doormats and gun-slingers. It holds within it Blinkers and Spurs - two
funny and moving stories that follow the first time encounters of four
extraordinary strangers. In Blinkers, the walls are brought crashing
down between two seemingly disparate neighbours: Amy, a slovenly punk
rock fantasist and Monty, a fastidious librarian obsessed with horses.
In Spurs the audience is taken to the Wild West of America, where a
Cowboy on the run has a strange and fateful exchange with a mysterious
Indian.
Together, the shows celebrate the joys and foibles of human nature,
and ask: why is it so difficult to communicate over the smallest
distances?
Written and performed by Natalie Medlock (Arcadia) and Dan Musgrove
(Angels in America, Antigone), A Horse Story: Blinkers and Spurs is an
astute observation on the quirks of human nature, exploring the beauty
that is found in the mundane, and everyday oddities of life.
"It's the simplicity of horses and the driving rhythms of Patti Smith
crammed into the tiniest apartments" says Medlock. "It's ridiculous
and perfect!"
Musgrove agrees, "It's a peep hole into our living room
idiosyncrasies. A microscope for the sweet-absurd irony of our
everyday existence. We are strange lonely creatures and we need other
strange lonely creatures to survive - so let's celebrate that and
laugh!"
Blinkers is directed by acclaimed actress and director Sophie Roberts
(Angels in America, A Streetcar Named Desire, Antigone). Spurs is
directed by the incomparable new theatre talent, Laurel Devenie
(Othello, The Graduate, The Tempest).
"Original, creative and economically written, it is both funny and
tension filled…One of the stand out Fringe Festival shows." - Ewen
Coleman, Dominion Post.
"On the one hand Blinkers is way-out wacky, on the other it's awfully
familiar. Well worth seeing" - John Smythe, Theatreview.
"It's an irresistible devised work…humour and pathos in perfect harmony."
- Lynn Freeman, Capital Times.
A Horse Story premieres at The Basement for a strictly limited season
before touring to the Melbourne Fringe Festival in August.
- Ends –

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