IT TAKES FOREVER IF YOU GO BY INERTIA
1993
A party ends in
murder and cannibalism and the detective
has no luck in finding the culprits. He
finds himself in Hell and returns to Earth
only after making a deal with a demon. But
now he has a rubber ball on elastic that
seems to be affecting the whole structure
of reality.
And he is to blame for everything going
wrong, ever!
After travelling through time, trips to
alternate dimensions and strange
experiences with toast, religion and
fruit, he finds a way to get back to Hell.
But will his plea for a return to
normality be successful?
And why is everything connected to the
lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody?
Everyone's
got to start somewhere and this was where my
solo career really began. I'd been doing a
few spots on the London circuit in a double
act with Al 'Pub Landlord' Murray, but my
style wasn't really what the audience
wanted. So I thought that a more theatrical
environment would serve my material better.
Al went on to hugely brilliant things and I
sat down to think how I could structure an
hour long show around material I thought was
good, but put it into a narrative that could
hold the attention.
Scifi
was the answer. A lot of my stuff had this
other worldliness about it and if I could
work out a plot that was consistent in its
otherworldliness then surely it all would
work. I'd been playing with the ball on
elastic which became the show's Dawson Ball
and reading lots of pop science about the
weirdness at the heart of all matter and
everything kind of followed on from those
twin inspirations. I had a nice Hawaiian
shirt so I travelled to a Hawaiian
dimension. I had these fun glasses so I
created the Harry character to start things
off. Everyone knows 'Bohemian Rhapsody' but
noone knows what it's really about, so I
structured the story around that song. And
it seemed to work.
The music and sound was created by Dave Pape using a sampler and an LP copy of Carmina Burana. There was a brilliant Super-8 film about toast created by Richard Bracewell (multimedia!). It was directed and produced by Ted Smith and I pretty much made all the props. The poster and flyer were designed by Lorenzo Wood with a photo by Andy Lane. We went up as The Irrational Geographic Society which also produced 'It Happened Tomorrow' at C venue. This was a triple bill of short scifi plays of which I wrote the middle one, a pulp time travel whodunnit starring Sally Phillips as the detective. We were also in 'Ra-Ra Rasputin' together, Richard Herring's tribute to Boney M and mad Russians. It was a great year.
"CARRY
ON, NOTHING REALLY MATTERS. . . THE EXISTENTIAL
CARRY ON FILM WRITTEN BY SAMUEL BECKETT"Read a script extract from It Takes Forever if You Go by Inertia
