Theatre review: Botallack O'Clock

The abstract painter Roger Hilton isn't widely remembered nowadays, and evidently wasn't famous enough during his lifetime to be invited onto Desert Island Disks, either. This was presumably a sore point for him as he'd got his list of disks and luxury items ready, and one thing Eddie Elks' Botallack O'Clock does is rectify this situation. The title comes from a poem W.S. Graham wrote about Hilton after his death, describing the time and place where the artist did most of his late work: Confined to his bed after a lifetime of alcoholism, in a bedroom/studio at his house in Botallack, Cornwall, waking up to paint in the middle of the night. This is how Elks' play opens, with Hilton (Dan Frost) waking up and, after scrambling around for a drink and a roll-up, muttering advice to himself as to how best to start that night's artwork. After failing to tune into a station, the Radio (George Haynes) starts speaking to him directly, interviewing him for Desert Island Disks.

Theatre review: Mugs Arrows

One of those shows that's very hard to say anything about without the risk of spoilers, Eddie Elks' Mugs Arrows features two men in suits and a woman in a wedding dress. The Old Red Lion pub has encroached on the little theatre upstairs, where Ken McClymont's set has done a nice job of recreating a pub in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by fields and livestock. It's long after hours but the two men in the bar are friends of the landlord's, who's gone to bed after a big day. Ed (Elks) and Pat (Rhys King) play darts and exchange cryptic remarks about their friend, the day that's just passed, and their own lives which have had some difficult recent times, until they're joined by Sarah (Chiara Wilde,) who wants to join in the game. Her smiley, enthusiastic friendliness make no difference to the mix of discomfort and hostility the two men show towards her.