We have been invited by critic David Collard (the Times Literary Supplement, the Literary Review, Sonofabook etc.) to select and introduce a film set in London.
Somewhat perversely we have chosen a satirical comedy that takes place after a nuclear attack: The Bed Sitting Room by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus. The capital only persists in their characters’ memories as they shuffle about an esturine china clay pit (formerly London). A series of hysterical encounters unfold like an irradiated set of seaside postcards.
Before the main feature, we are very pleased to present a short extract on the theme from an unpublished novel by David Henningham, as well as a short introduction on why Satire and Surrealism are such sane means for describing the incomprehensible destruction of WW1 and the nuclear threat. We will contrast this with insane official advice on coexisting with Mutually Assured Destruction. Does satire have a role to play in disarmament? Were nukes inevitable? Who will get the last chocolate bar on the Circle Line?
Have we evolved the ability to foresee and prevent our own destruction? Or merely to enable it?
This all takes place in one of the capitals best appointed bohemian bunkers, the basement bar Vout-O-Renee’s
The Bed-Sitting Room (1969)
Featuring Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Marty Feldman, Rita Tushingham, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe and more.
£5 on the door at Vout-O-Renee’s (in the basement under the Roman Catholic Church of the English Martyrs, come down the steps and ring the bell)
30 Prescot St
London
E1 8BB
7pm for a 7.30pm start.
Tues 4th October 2016
David Collard wrote this about us in the Times Literary Supplement. And this.
