Performance



London Performance Studios is pleased to present 'P.S. Your Cat is Dead!', a script-in-hand performance directed by Alastair Curtis.



Jimmy Zoole is having a bad New Year's Eve. 

If losing the only manuscript of his first novel wasn’t bad enough, he’s also been fired from his job, dumped by his girlfriend and his beloved cat is dead. And now he has returned home to find a man has broken into his apartment and is trying to make off with his TV.

Vito Antonucci, his would-be thief, is a charismatic bisexual with bad-boy charm. In a fit of rage, Jimmy captures him and chains him to the kitchen sink. But as fireworks light up the sky over New York, Jimmy discovers an unexpected attraction to his prisoner.



‘P.S. Your Cat is Dead!’ is a blackly comic and surprisingly tender tale of sexual discovery by James Kirkwood. It was blasted as ‘homosexual wish fulfilment’ when it premiered on Broadway in 1975. Directed by Alastair Curtis, this script-in-hand performance is its first UK revival in 40 years.



James Kirkwood was the son of two Hollywood screen stars. Best known for co-writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical ‘A Chorus Line’, he was also an actor, comedian, playwright and prolific novelist whose works, including ‘Good Times/Bad Times’ and ‘There Must Be A Pony!’, won praise for their ironic humour and frank depictions of queer desire. Like many of Kirkwood’s works, they have fallen out of print since his AIDS-related death in 1989.



The AIDS Plays Project is restaging and republishing the theatrical works of writers whose lives were cut short by HIV/AIDS-related complications. Striving for cultural recovery and repair, the project seeks to mend the connection between these trailblazing playwrights and a younger generation of queer artists and audiences in the UK.

Cast

Ben Allen
Lewis Brown
Luca Kamleh Chapman
Florence Keith-Roach. 

Creative Team

Direction: Alastair Curtis

Music: Helen Noir

Costumes and Set: Max Allen & Elliott Adcock
Lighting and Technical Manager: Sorcha Stott-Strzala 
Intimacy Director: Stella Moss

Producers: Izzy Parriss, Alastair Curtis
Production Assistant: Cara Dromgoole
Event Production: KIND 

Graphics: Tom Joyes, Fran Ortega


With thanks to Arthur Beckenstein, Sean Egan and Dickie Beau.