Productions
Barflies
Adapted and Directed by Ben Harrison
The Barony Bar
Edinburgh Fringe August 2009
"Some people never go crazy. What boring, awful lives they must lead."Henry Barflies
Crossing Hudson Street in New York in September 2007 Judith Doherty and Ben Harrison spotted a classic New York barfly beckoning them into an old-style New York boozer, the White Horse Tavern. By the end of the night, and remembering Bukowski's work from university days as well as the famous 1987 film Barfly with Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, they had conceived Barflies, and decided it should be staged in the company's local, The Barony Bar.
"your life is your lifeThe Laughing Heart' Charles Bukowski
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission...
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
but it beats the darkness."
Keith Fleming and Gail Watson play the booze-sozzled lovers in a transposition of Bukowski's Los Angeles to Edinburgh that fuses Bukowski's trademark visceral demotic with a Scottish vernacular. The bar and pub table became the stage for a text adapted from several of Bukowski's works, predominantly three stories from The Most Beautiful Woman in Town collection. The adaptation ranged from classic scenes of extreme drinking and hurried desperate sex to snatched moments of tenderness; from heartbreak and loss to a defiant denouncing of the work ethic and conventional thinking.
"All you can do is light another cigarette, pour another drink, check the peeling walls for lips and eyes. What men and women do to each other is beyond comprehension."Henry Barflies
The original score, composed and performed by long-term Grid Iron collaborator David Paul Jones, made further connections between Scotland and West Coast America, fusing material from Tom Waits, Robert Burns and Nina Simone as well as original composition.
"This is a world where everybody’s got to do something. Why? Some guy lay down this rule. Everyone’s got to do something. Be something. It makes me tired thinking of all the things I don’t want to do. Save the planet. Go to India. Travel the world. I can travel the world from my barstool."Henry Barflies
The production, one of Grid Iron's most controversial with a critical response ranging from two stars to five-star raves, was the recipient of two awards, the Herald Angel Award and Scotsman Fringe First. In addition Gail Watson was nominated for Best Actress in the Stage Awards and the whole company for Best Ensemble. It sold out 3 weeks prior to its Edinburgh Fringe opening.