Two comic plays by Lee Hall which have had success at the Edinburgh Festival and are coming to London in February 2000 Cooking with Elvis is a domestic play that is both farcical and upsetting. Mam and Jill live together in an uneasy calm. Jill is overweight and a fiendish cook who whips up one exotic dish after another. Her father (and Mam's husband) is stuck in a wheel chair as the result of a stroke. He can neither speak nor move, but he can hear. He was a famous Elvis impersonator and from time to time steps out of the wheel chair in a series of fantasy scenes to give stirring renditions of some of Elvis's most famous hits. But Mam brings into the house a new young lover whose presence in the house become the source for hilarity and big time trouble. The ending is a deadly one, you can be sure. The play has been compared to the early black farces of Joe Orton. Also included in this volume is Bollocks!, Lee Hall's contemporary version of the Expressionist German playwright Ernst Toller's Hinkemann, which has been updated from twenties Bavaria to contemporary Tyneside.

This text offers the two comic plays previously staged in London in February 2000.

About the Author
After his acclaimed play Spoonface Steinberg (1997), Lee Hall was appointed Writer in Residence at the RSC 1999/2000 under the Pearson Playwrights Scheme Award. Other plays include Cooking with Elvis (2000, Edinburgh Festival and West End) and an adaptation of Goldoni's The Servant with Two Masters (RSC 1999). He also wrote the screenplay to the film Billy Elliot (1999), receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. His most recent play, The Pitmen Painters premiered at the Live Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 2007 before transferring to the National Theatre 2008.

Reviews
Cooking With Elvis: 'That subjects of such sensitivity can be made even vaguely funny is a considerable achievement.' Mark Fisher, Guardian, 18.7.09 'Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall is one of Britain's most mercurial dramatists. He shifts between art forms...as quickly as he breaks from one genre...to another... Hall's ability to combine the sociopolitical with popular entertainment is well established.' Mark Brown, Sunday Herald, 19.7.09



Book Information
ISBN 9780413748607
Author Lee Hall
Format Paperback
Page Count 128
Imprint Methuen Drama
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 100g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 127mm * 7mm