Tickets now on sale for The Year of the Sex Olympics

Tickets for the Scytheplays/Lass O'Gowrie Productions adaptation of The Year of the Sex Olympics are now available for online purchase here.

The Greater Manchester Fringe Festival, which launches on Sunday July 1st, showcases a wide variety of entertainment including a new stage production of Porridge, new comedy with Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer, jazz music from the Freedom Principle, more sci-fi with the Doctor Who spin-off Robots of Death, and original stage drama such as AfterWords, Bottled Wasps and Scytheplays' own Together in Electric Dreams.  For the full run-down of the many and various events, please visit the festival website.

Together in Electric Dreams tickets now available

Tickets for Lass O'Gowrie Productions and Scytheplays' next production, Together in Electric Dreams, can now be purchased online here.  The run commences on Wednesday July 4th in the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival, performing in the Salmon Room at the Lass O'Gowrie.

Above: Matthew O'Neill as Alan Sugar and Daniel Thackeray as Sir Clive Sinclair.  Photo by Mina Ahmed.  Thanks to Samsi Restaurant, Manchester.

Together in Electric Dreams is produced by Gareth Kavanagh and directed by Fi Hudson and Daniel Thackeray.

The Year of the Sex Olympics: it isn't Big Brother who's doing the watching...

Lass O'Gowrie Productions and Scytheplays are proud and tremendously excited to announce their third collaboration of 2012: The Year of the Sex Olympics, part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.

In the futuristic Output Area 27, Nat Mender is the producer of TV's top-rated show, Sport Sex Live - a key part of a worldwide programme to keep the population docile by feeding them an unending stream of televised, pornographic 'entertainment'.  But, frustrated with the prescribed, regulated world of Output, Nat is looking for a way out - and when the opportunity comes in the form of an offer to 'star' in a new reality show about old-fashioned family life on a remote island, he grabs it.  But life on the island is not all it seems - and Nat doesn't realise the extent to which Output will continue to control his destiny.

Nigel Kneale's blackly comic science-fiction satire about a world in which constant immersion in television has almost replaced the need for real life experiences was originally written for BBC2 in 1968.  As the writer who arguably first defined popular television with The Quatermass Experiment in 1953 and then scripted the BBC's hugely controversial 1954 adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Kneale was the ideal person to create such a bitingly bleak, post-Orwellian future vision - one which seems even more relevant in the 'reality TV'-soaked and celebrity-obsessed present day.

The superb cast includes, pictured above (L-R): Will Hutchby (Kin Hodder), Louise Hamer (Misch), Claire Dean (Deanie Webb), Alastair Gillies (Nat Mender), Leni Murphy (the Executive) and Howard Whittock (Coordinator Ugo Priest).  Photo by James Goodwin.

Produced by Gareth Kavanagh and directed by Ross Kelly and Daniel Thackeray, The Year of the Sex Olympics is performing in the Salmon Room at the Lass O'Gowrie at 6.30pm and 9pm, Friday 13th July; 2pm and 4pm, Saturday 14th July; 2pm and 4.30pm, Sunday 15th July; and 6pm and 9pm, Tuesday 31st July.  Tickets can be bought on the door or booked online here.

Together in Electric Dreams

Scytheplays can now proudly announce their next collaboration with Lass O'Gowrie Productions: Together in Electric Dreams, which is playing in early July as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.

Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the pocket calculator and the Sinclair ZX81 (the first ever personal computer), was Britain's pioneer entrepreneur-boffin and a constant innovator in electronics.  But by 1986 the bottom was falling out of the British electronics industry and to save his ailing company Sir Clive was forced to strike a desperate deal with arch-rival Amstrad - the new big name in home computing started by one Alan Sugar.

Together in Electric Dreams spotlights the tense and tactical dinner-date between the two business kingpins as they each try to secure the advantage while enjoying supper in a traditional Japanese restaurant.  Funny and poignant, it's a revealing look at a little-known historical encounter, and a portrait of two apparently different men who found themselves fighting over the same turf and changing millions of lives in the process.

Playing Alan is Matthew O'Neill (pictured left) while Daniel Thackeray plays Sir Clive.  Matthew and Daniel have worked together before in the acclaimed sci-fi-comedy audio series Nova Star Hunters (available to download online here) while Matthew regularly writes and stars in comedy items produced by Vexation Audio which can be listened to for free at Vexation's audio channel.  Daniel (pictured above in character and sitting outside the Lass in an authentic 1985 example of Sir Clive's C5 electric cars!) previously appeared in The Say Can Blues and co-directed The Ballad of Halo Jones.

Together in Electric Dreams performs twice daily on Wednesday 4th July (7pm and 9pm), Thursday 5th July (7pm and 9pm) and Sunday 8th July (2pm and 4pm).  To book tickets please go to the Lass O'Gowrie website.

Together in Electric Dreams is based on an idea by Gareth Kavanagh.  Main photo by James Goodwin and C5 provided by Lance Colwyn.