HOWARD Spencer-Mosley enjoys taking the mick with his alternative York guided tours and anarchic stand-up.
You may think he is having another laugh in setting up a midnight theatre company, but more than 50 insomniacs found refuge in Screen One for last night's launch of this more serious venture from Howard and his fellow duty managers at City Screen, Alison Goldsmith and Peter Rodger.
Actor Howard and director Alison studied theatre, film and television at York St John College, and a shared vision feeds their multi-media work, which not unexpectedly makes use of the Screen One screen.
This is just the kind of arthouse production, unusual venue and late-night starting time you would find at the Edinburgh Fringe, and so is the 50-minute play.
In The Penal Colony is typical Steven Berkoff sandpaper theatre, adapted from a Franz Kafka short story.
To Markus Jones's unnerving soundscapes, projectionist Nelso Pulotu flashes up looped, mind-warping images of a sun-blasted tropical country intercut with the words Obsession, Death, Fear. This is a penal colony where Mosley-Spencer's obsessive officer gives Rodger's explorer a guided tour of the torture device cum killing machine as a prisoner (Samuel Ward, York's thinnest man) and a taciturn guard ( Alistair Reith) look on. Howard ends this play chortling like a loon, having the last laugh as ever.
In The Penal Colony, City Screen, York, at midnight tonight (06/04/05).
Updated: 11:43 Wednesday, April 06, 2005
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