by The room is hot, sticky and covered with confetti with feet. A mashup of the Noughties Banger causes our body to move. When Club Nvrlnd comes to an end, the audience does not want to go off the stage, and our throat scratches from screaming. “I sing for every word every evening,” grins the show’s writer, Jack Holden, and ran over after having just had a boogie on the platform. We all glitter with sweat and nostalgia, the dizzying delirium of this show cannot be resisted.
In the next few months, the spotlight will stick to Holden. A power package of a performer and a clever, emotional writer, the Jukebox NightCl musical of the 35-year-old, already has the audience on the Edinburgh-Fransen-Rand on the street. In the meantime, his adaptation of Alan Hollinghur’s Queerem classic novel The Line of Beauty will soon be staged in Almeida in London and the true crime thriller Kenrex, which he wrote along and in which he is written and in which he plays the leading role, for a London run. “I’m an optimist,” he says and smiling about the coffee earlier a day. “I say yes and cliny then how to do it.”
I’m a Peter Pan myself … fear of growing up
Holden proves his muscles as an actor in the ten percent of the ten percent of the war horse and showed his strength as a writer with cruise, an electronically rated story of a survivor of the AIDS crisis, which were voluntarily mixed on the LGBTQ+ hearing concrete table with his time. When producer David Adkin and director Steve Kunis saw the olivier-nominated show, they turned with another challenge to Holden: to write the book for a musical conversion of the familiar history of Peter Pan into a night club in Noughties. “I’m a Peter Pan myself,” admits Holden. “Fear of growing up and the attempt to create musical, euphoric, hedonistic Neverland.
In this blurred world we, the Lost Boys, we join Peter (a petulant Thomas Grant) on the eve of his 30th birthday. After the climax in the high school, he now refuses to grow up. Le Fil from Rupauls Drag Race’s Le Fil shines as our COMPERE Tiger Lily, while a rival club owner, a shimmering, naked hook (Matthew Gent), tries to sabotage NVRLND. “It’s absolutely chaos,” grins Holden. “I think we found our audience last night. They are young and ready to dance.”
Music pulsates through all works by Holden. For Kenrex, his thriller, who was written together with Ed Stamboulian, he continued his collaboration with John Patrick Elliot of the little unspeaker who achieved a cruise. The show was in production for seven years. “We cooked it low and slowly,” says Holden. “It is not a inexpensive process.” But there was time for them to find the right form for what started as an experiment and was asked whether it was possible to stage a podcast for true crime. You had the show with a line -up of 10 workshops at Lockdown Workshop. “As part of the radio, we recognized for true crime that they hear voices in sequence.” Holden now plays every role.
Seeing his performance in the course of Kenrex means seeing a shape converter in action. With Elliot’s music and clever technology, Holden rolls through the list of various characters, who finally decide in 1981 to take justice into their own hands. Holden found inspiration in Andrew Scott’s one-man show Vanya, which revealed the strength to take time to the transition between characters. “Kenrex is an exercise in silence,” he says. “It is a walk walk every night.”
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Holden’s theater research from the 80s continues with the beauty line that he adapts to Rupert Goold’s last season at Almeida. His version shines the text to concentrate on the four young men while navigating with different privileges in the social changes in the decade. “It is about how much has changed,” says Holden, “but also how much is absolutely the same of this permanently anchored class structure and snobilism.” The story also gives back its focus on the AIDS crisis. “I have fictional arguments in my head about why I make a different game [this topic]”, He says.” But then I fight back and go: How many war films were made? “
Holden was born in 1990 and interviewed his place to write over the 1980s, but he sees his long shadow, which strikes through his life, with homophobic legislation § 28 only canceled as a teenager. “Older gay friends who remember the AIDS crisis say that everyone has only a wild time,” he says repentant. “Then came aids and brought so much terror.”
Now, with the finished availability of drug preparation, Holden finally hopes for the weakness of this fear. “It’s a bit of a sexual renaissance,” he laughs. Freedom begins to develop again. The looseness of the body. The hug of a wild night. The unadulterated fun, the club nvrlnd encouraged. Holden smiles. “The best drama always happens on the dance floor.”
• The club NVRLND is located on the assembly checkpoint in Edinburgh until August 24th. The beauty line is located on October 21, November 29th in Almeida, London; From December 3 to December 1st in February, Kenrex is in the other palace in London.
