MY UNCLE ARLY (2002)
Written by Shôn Dale-Jones and David Farmer.

Originally performed as a co-production by Hoipolloi and Tiebreak Theatre Companies. Nominated for Total Theatre Award (Edinburgh 2004). Selected for Festival of Firsts by the Royal Opera House (2004). Toured in Los Angeles and New York (2005). Hoipolloi is planning to remount the production in 2009.

Edward Lear is one of Britain’s favourite writers and his nonsense verse has delighted generations of children and adults alike. Now Hoipolloi invites you to take a journey into his weird and wonderfully witty imagination and join Lear on an adventure towards the great Gromboolian plain.

Inspired by his life, poems and illustrations, My Uncle Arly is an inventive and engaging production full of music, song and clowning that delves deep into Lear’s Victorian sense of nonsense humour.

Filled with some of his best-loved characters, the show creates a stupendously silly and gloriously giggly world where easels become birds, hats fly and where we meet the pobble who has no toes and the dong with the luminous nose.

"At last, the show we've all been waiting for. Bursting at the seams with theatrical energy and full to the brim with visual wit. My Uncle Arly is also a sensational piece of ensemble playing: every member of the cast is firing on every available cylinder throughout, so that even when the nonsense is at its most arrant, there is no danger of losing the thread.  Sensationally silly and utterly brilliant... a sensational piece of ensemble playing…utterly brilliant."
- SUNDAY HERALD * * * * *

'As a celebration of nonsense, inspired by the life and works of Edward Lear, this is quite, quite mad.'
- THE STAGE

'Lear's inspired rubbish is chanted with operatic intensity.'
- DAILY MAIL

'Breathtakingly perfect... visually astounding.'
- TOTAL THEATRE

'A stomach-achingly funny theatrical feast from start to finish.'
- THE LIST * * * *