Oliver Driver Returns to Nothing w Silo Theatre

Media Release – August 16 2010
For immediate release

Oliver Driver Returns to Nothing with Silo Theatre

Silo Theatre presents
THOM PAIN (BASED ON NOTHING)
Written by Will Eno. Directed by Peter Elliott.

Making his return on stage, the incomparable Oliver Driver channels the darkly comic yarns of the titular protagonist in the award winning THOM PAIN (BASED ON NOTHING), playing at the Herald Theatre from September 24th.

Meet Thom Pain. An enigmatic everyman in a sharp suit but no socks.

He’s got an itch to scratch and he needs your help. Armed with a wicked attitude and a broken heart, he’ll weave narrative threads of childhood trauma, yearning, that thing called the human condition, a bee sting and a boy who died. In his quest for salvation, he’ll stop at nothing, be distracted by nothing. Except maybe a piece of lint. Or the woman in the second row.

Will Eno’s hip-to-the-hurt symphony of linguistic gymnastics became an underground phenomenon in London in 2004. It transferred to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and has since touched down in Paris, New York, Sydney, Sao Paolo and Berlin.

It sounds simple enough. One man, charismatic but disturbed, is alone onstage. Sharing tangential anecdotes and blackly funny meanderings, he’ll keep the audience guessing as to why this seemingly bright young man has become so broken. And he’ll let them know, if he can remember.

Described by The San Francisco Weekly as a show that “has all the emotion in that moment before a first kiss... or a fist fight”, THOM PAIN earned rave reviews upon it’s debut at the Edinburgh Fringe, receiving the Fringe First Award alongside both the Herald Angel Award and Best Actor award for James Urbaniak.

Urbaniak and the show ventured to perform off-Broadway in 2005 to further enthusiastic reviews, with the actor nominated for a 2005 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance and the production a 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama nomination. Eno has been compared to other literary greats – The New York Times describing him as “a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation.”

Last year, Oliver Driver set audiences on fire with his wow-factor performance in Ruben Guthrie. Who else but he could step into the enigmatic boots of THOM PAIN, pulling off the charming and shocking acerbic wit and vulnerability of character? It’s been a year of highs and lows for Driver – following the abrupt cancellation of Sunrise earlier this year, he’s recently bounced back, directing Stephen Sondheim’s knockout musical Assassins at the Auckland Town Hall.

Shaping this potentially unreliable narrator is director Peter Elliott, who made his professional directing debut in 2009 with the critically acclaimed production of The Scene. It’s been a busy year for Elliott, performing in productions of Ruben Guthrie, God of Carnage and When the Rain Stops Falling and co-hosting TV One’s Match Fishing League. He collaborates with Driver for the fourth time on this unique, personal and idiosyncratic theatre experience which defies classification, but is simply too good too miss.

“…A small masterpiece … Will Eno is an original, a maverick wordsmith … Sublime …” - The New York Times

THOM PAIN (BASED ON NOTHING) plays
September 24th – October 16th 2010
Herald Theatre, THE EDGE
Tickets: $25 - $45 service fees will apply
Bookings through THE EDGE: 0800 BUYTICKETS or www.buytickets.co.nz

ENDS

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