The Great Almighty Gill

New Perspectives Theatre Company make a welcome return with their new show, after 12 days at the Edinburgh Festival.

“My dad, Dave, died on 5 November 2015 of complications related to dementia. It was f*cking awful. But the eulogy I gave was brilliant. It deserves a bigger crowd. It’s my way to see if some humanity, art and wonder can be salvaged from the molten wreckage of dementia”

Excellent.  A funny and moving tribute to a father who you wouldn’t have wanted to get on the wrong side of. 

This play is not just a funeral. Although it does begin with the (brilliant of course) eulogy, the lectern quickly snaps open into a bar. Gone is the son, replaced instead by his father, David.  Hoffmann-Gill is a charming actor who shines bright in his comic role as his dad, delivering a tight 20 minute stand-up routine that would give a lot of comedians at this festival a run for their money.

David is a geezer, a gangster and a model diabetic. He’s also strong headed and quite a scary man. We hear all about his life dodging the law and the difficult relationships formed along the way. We’re charmed and endeared to him, but we wouldn’t want to be in his bad books. Daniel and David had a difficult relationship, he was give the name ‘Hoffman’, so if David had to disappear, so could the latter part of his son’s name.

Daniel does a model job of lulling us into a false sense of security, until all of a sudden we realise we’re at the point of his story where David has developed dementia. The tone’s light but the jokes have stopped. There’s a kind love in Daniel’s delivery which leaves us choked.  – Everything Theatre review

Join Daniel, to experience the life and times of Dave through a tour-de-force autobiographical performance, part tribute, part stand-up with occasional lip-syncing.  (Daniel Hoffman-Gill is writer and performer)

The Guardian says: “In Angharad Jones’s production, her first for New Perspectives since becoming artistic director last year, the actor retells his father’s life story in more detail, this time in the manner of a club comedian, playing it not for laughs but with a brash delivery and blunt honesty. It is an odd tangent that makes sense only when Hoffmann-Gill switches tone again. The biographical material, we realise, is to illustrate what was lost as his father became beset by dementia.   A tender, honest show.  A thoughtful funny farewell”.

Tickets £13.50:  Students £10.00   Available now at the Foxlowe as well as online at wegottickets.com/event/554204