This clip features Susanna Fiore and myself in my favourite scene from the play (mainly because I get to act like the office jackass):

This is a great scene between two fantastic actors: Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Flintham and Benjamin Peters. Lottie’s character (George) is the office new girl, trying to get on in journalism. Ben’s character (James) is the editor of the newspaper and wants the new girl to ‘keep an eye’ on her colleagues for him…

John wanted a big American movie-style intro to the show, to juxtapose with the low-key opening of the show (for maximum comic effect!) so we wrote a show and recorded it at Resonance FM’s studios.

I should tell you what the show is. It’s called Pifftacular and stars John as Piff The Magic Dragon – a wonderfully grumpy and very magical dragon who likes card magic and kidnapping princesses.

Check out Piff’s site for more info and go and see the show to hear my dulcet tones as a brash American voiceover guy (and enjoy some great magic and princess kidnapping).

It’s produced by Marion Drew for an online publication called Extra Extra, hence the title of this post. I mention it as Marion very kindly mentions the cast by name including me.

You can read the full review here.

The Sauce is a very good blog by journalist Brendan Montague who was kind enough to watch the show twice and take part in the two post-show discussions that we held to expand on the issues of the play Oh Well Never Mind Bye by Steven Lally.

Brendan is a former employee of a couple of Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers so he is one of the best placed people we spoke to for comment on the veracity of the play and the situations the journalists find themselves in. Brendan was very complimentary about the show and even said to me at one point:

‘I can introduce you to the guy you’re playing if you like!’

From my point of view (and that of the writer Steven Lally) this was a great compliment as it shows just how real and well-researched Steve’s writing is. The fact that my character (Fin Ashmore) exists out there in the world of journalism is both great from a creative point of view and sad from the point of view of right thinking journalists who are not content to spew out quotes and information taken directly from the news wire without questioning its authority.

In any case, you can read the review that Brendan wrote for The Sauce by clicking here.

The image on the left is taken from Time Out London (June 25th – July 1st 2009) and features a photo of yours truly along with a glowing recommendation from their reviewer Andrew. To view the image full size and to zoom in on it, simply click the image.

Andrew also wrote a lovely review of the show which you can read by clicking here.

‘independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel’s 40-year occupation of Palestinian territories.’

You can read the full review here. Interesting stuff, bearing in mind the story of the play.

It’s a project that we started work on around 4 years ago, shortly after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell underground station in London. Jean Charles was shot as a result of a series of intelligence blunders by The Metropolitan Police following the London bombings of 7th July and the failed bombings of 22nd July. As a result of this, the Upstart project was originally called The 22nd July Project. We began by doing workshops on the ideas that the shooting brought to light, but slowly Tom and Steven realised that the wider issues of how the situation was reported were as crucial (if not, more so) than the direct effects of the shooting itself.

As a result, the idea for Oh Well Never Mind Bye came about. Shortly afterwards, the script was written by Steven and has just finished the casting process, using two new actors to the project and two (myself and the excellent Susanna Fiore) who have been in it since the events the play is based on occured. We start rehearsing next week for two weeks, then it’s on to a three week run at The Union Theatre in Southwark, south London.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll post info from rehearsals and news about the play itself. So, watch this space…