Past Productions

BARFLIES adapted from stories by Charles Bukowski

Adapted and directed by Ben Harrison

7th – 31st August 2009 - Edinburgh Festival

Main | Cast & Crew | What the Press Said

AWARDS:

• Scotsman Fringe First
  
• Herald Angel

‘‘Some people never get crazy. What truly awful lives they must lead’"

Bukowski

What starts as a gateway into a liberated, loose, affectionate and flirtatious view of the world can so easily become a prison, a destruction of the body, the mind and the memory. And yet, without alcohol, what great works of art might we have missed, what creative revelations, what relationships, what joyous and fumbled acts of love instigated at the bar and hastily consummated after a hurried taxi-ride home?

A search for meaning and pleasure in the arms and in the bodies of a series of women drives Henry to confront the darkest corners of himself and to challenge the whole ethic of the working life.  Maybe more humanity, more analysis of the human psyche could be found from the edge of a barstool than from the most wide-ranging travels or the deepest research in a library.  Barflies looks at the profound liberation of alcohol, its opening up of corners of sexuality and mental activity, as well as its more undesirable effects.

Multi-award winning Fringe favourites, Grid Iron, returned to the festival after an absence of three years with a brand new site-specific performance set in their local pub, The Barony Bar.

Barflies is supported by the Scottish Arts Council and the Festival Expo Made in Scotland Fund.