The Damnably Exciting Exploits of Curly Withers

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This play was also improvised by the cast, who were chosen on the basis that they had funny names.

The show also went to the Scottish Student Drama Festival (SSDF) in 1985.

“The Adventures of Curly Withers” began as a lunchtime production devised by Patrick Evans and Richard Metcalf , and improvised by a cast selected on the basis that if they had a funny name, they were in. Thus the cast included Syward Atkins, Candida Thring, and Humphrey Gravel.

A spoof on heroic fiction, Curly Withers was an idiotic distant relative of Indiana Jones, tumbling from one disaster to another, “Cripes” and”I say! “ never far from his lips. “Curly” proved such a success that it was staged as part of the 1985 S.S.D.F. at St. Andrews, given a £l,500 budget and booked for a subsequent run at George Square Theatre, the first George Square run since Paul Bader’s production of Brecht’s” The Caucasian Chalk Circle”. Expectations ran high. Colin McNeil, who now draws the cartoon character Judge Dredd, designed the poster, Curly Withers “ cartoon strip for the S.S.D.F. magazine. The first night sold out on advance bookings alone.

It was a disaster. The two hour show ran for three hours and a half, as the cast couldn’t find their entrances,so,far away were the dressing rooms. Everyone was devastated. The rest of the run at S.S.D.F. hardly attracted anyone, and there were still the Edinburgh dates to perfom.”

At least the other E.U.T.C. show, “Lunatic and Lover “ by Michael Meyer, also directed by Patrick Evans, was a quiet success. Evans drastically cut the running time off “Curly Withers” and rewrote major parts of the text, the cast sometimes getting new lines literally minutes before they were due on stage. The show was a huge success and sold out every night, largely due to the comic talents of Andrew Loudon, another Merry Mac who played the lead.

Edinburgh’s Bedlam Theatre p.11-12