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Cooking With Elvis' & 'Bollocks'
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.
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.
128 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2000
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8 people want to read
About the author
Lee Hall
18 books8 followersLee Hall (born 20 September 1966) is an English playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for the 2000 film Billy Elliot.
Hall was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne & Wear, in 1966, the son of a house painter and decorator and a housewife. He was educated at Benfield School in Walkergate. As a youth he went to Wallsend Young People's Theatre along with Deka Walmsley and Trevor Fox who later appeared in both Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters. He went to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he studied English literature and was taught by the poet Paul Muldoon.[1] After leaving Cambridge, he worked as a youth theatre fundraiser in Newcastle and at the Gate Theatre in London. In 1997, his playwriting career was launched with the broadcast of his radio play, Spoonface Steinberg, on BBC Radio 4.[2]
Hall was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne & Wear, in 1966, the son of a house painter and decorator and a housewife. He was educated at Benfield School in Walkergate. As a youth he went to Wallsend Young People's Theatre along with Deka Walmsley and Trevor Fox who later appeared in both Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters. He went to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he studied English literature and was taught by the poet Paul Muldoon.[1] After leaving Cambridge, he worked as a youth theatre fundraiser in Newcastle and at the Gate Theatre in London. In 1997, his playwriting career was launched with the broadcast of his radio play, Spoonface Steinberg, on BBC Radio 4.[2]
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 25, 2018
...I am honestly at a loss of words right now. This play was depraved, vile, and just plain old disgusting. I believe that most books have some sort of valuable message that can be taken away from it but this one honestly doesn't.
To make a long story short, I am in drama and chose to do a monologue from this play for competition without reading it before hand...big mistake.
There are racial slurs that are not called out to be wrong and disgusting, a pedophile relationship that does not have a big enough deal made out of it. Like 2 characters describe it as "wrong". These characters are the 14 year old girl's mother and the person she had the relationship with and not because he realizes that it's actually disgusting but because he actually has feelings for the girl's quadriplegic father and he forces himself onto this man who can give no consent. To top it all off, she straight kills her pet so that she could eat it...do not read Cooking with Elvis..just don't do it...it is actually disgusting to read
To make a long story short, I am in drama and chose to do a monologue from this play for competition without reading it before hand...big mistake.
There are racial slurs that are not called out to be wrong and disgusting, a pedophile relationship that does not have a big enough deal made out of it. Like 2 characters describe it as "wrong". These characters are the 14 year old girl's mother and the person she had the relationship with and not because he realizes that it's actually disgusting but because he actually has feelings for the girl's quadriplegic father and he forces himself onto this man who can give no consent. To top it all off, she straight kills her pet so that she could eat it...do not read Cooking with Elvis..just don't do it...it is actually disgusting to read
May 28, 2015
loved cooking with elvis, not too taken with bollocks.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews