Roll up! Roll up! And gather round the Itinerant Music Hall: a rag-tag troupe of three delightful miscreants, they reel into town and tell you their tales of woe. Varsickle Tilley, Glass Eye and Piccadilly Johnny, refugees from the beginning of the new century, are on a journey to find their way back home.
They are the world’s smallest (and only) travelling music hall outfit: an upright honky-tonk piano and a tumble down stage, strapped onto a bicycle. A blend of storytelling, cabaret, improvisation and high-jinks vaudeville.
CREATIVE TEAM:
Director: Jessica Edwards;
Co-creator: James Rowland;
Designer: Amelia Jane Hankin;
Producer & Production Manager: Rosalyn Newbery
PERFORMERS:
James Rowland;
Kate Adams;
Pete Ashmore
James Rowland – Varsickle Tilley
James Rowland is currently performing in Flipping the Bird’s The Itinerant Music Hall, of which he is also co-creator.
Recent work includes You Once Said Yes (Look Left Look Right; Edinburgh British Council Showcase 13, Roundhouse, Perth International Festival) Heist (DifferencEngine @ Theatre Delicatessen) and Home Theatre UK (Theatre Royal Stratford East). He has also performed in Soyuz 40 and Buckeroo for One (The Arcola), Consensus (Riverside Studios), Fuente Ovejuna (The Southwark Playhouse), Once Upon A Christmas (Look Left Look Right, Covent Garden). He has worked in Radio (Four, Obviously) and on BBC1 (Doctors, obviously). He is a member of the cabaret band The iDiOT Circus and performs Musical Comedy under the stage name James Rowland (finalist of the Musical Comedy Awards 2012). He trained at The Drama Centre London.
Kate Adams – Piccadilly Johnny
Kate studied Classics at Kings’ College, London, where she performed many plays in Ancient Greek, played in the jazz band and scraped a second.
Productions in theatres around the country include: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (York Theatre Royal), Thieves’ Carnival (The Watermill), Cider With Rosie (New Vic), A Christmas Carol, Peter Pan, Stamping, Shouting and Singing Home (Nuffield), The Corrupted Angel, Gastronomic, Crime and Punishment, The 39 Steps, The Country Wife (Forest Forge), The Falling Sky, Dolly, Lark Rise to Candleford (New Perspectives), Twelfth Night, Macbeth (all three witches at once!), Henry V, Under the Bed (Theatre Centre), Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Salty Socks of Dunkirk and Alice in Wonderland (Northampton Theatre Royal), Father Christmas (Lyric, Hammersmith), The Hired Man and most recently Tom’s Midnight Garden with Birmingham Stage Company.
Productions with her own company include three Shakespeare tours around Japan, and a series of cabaret music halls at Salisbury Playhouse.
She loves Music Hall and is delighted to be doing so for the first time as a man.
Pete Ashmore – Glass Eye
Pete trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama.
Theatre credits include: The Canterbury Tales (Palace Theatre, Watford); Mansfield Park (Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds & No.1 tour); Hamlet (Actors from the London Stage); Manchester Sound: the massacre, (Library Theatre); A View from the Bridge, The Winter’s Tale, Under Milk Wood, David Copperfield, Beauty and the Beast (Mercury Theatre); The Jungle Book (Lyric Theatre, Belfast); Macbeth (National Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Mikado (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Grimm Tales (Library Theatre); Vernon God Little, The Ruffian on the Stair, The Queen of Spades, The Lady Aoi, La Musica, Venice Preserved, Nothing (the Citizens Theatre & E59E59 Theatres Off Broadway); Public Property (the Hampstead Theatre); Tom’s Midnight Garden, Jemima Puddle-Duck (Unicorn Theatre); Cutlery Wars (Soho Theatre); One Snowy Night (Chichester Minerva Theatre) and Faust (Malmo Opera).
Television: includes Silent Witness, Holby City and The Bill (BBC).
Pete is an accomplished violinist specializing in traditional music.