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Me, As a Penguin
A charmingly offbeat, surreal comedy of knitting, penguins and Battenberg.
Stitch is hitting the gay scene of Hull. Or at least dipping his toe in the water, while staying with his heavily pregnant sister Liz and her shabby sofa-loving partner Mark. But why won’t Stitch let anyone into the bathroom even though Liz is dying for a pee? And who is the man in the giant penguin costume?
Me, As a Penguin premiered at the Arcola Theatre, London, in 2010.
This volume also features two monologues by Tom Wells, About a Goth and Notes for First Time Astronauts.
Stitch is hitting the gay scene of Hull. Or at least dipping his toe in the water, while staying with his heavily pregnant sister Liz and her shabby sofa-loving partner Mark. But why won’t Stitch let anyone into the bathroom even though Liz is dying for a pee? And who is the man in the giant penguin costume?
Me, As a Penguin premiered at the Arcola Theatre, London, in 2010.
This volume also features two monologues by Tom Wells, About a Goth and Notes for First Time Astronauts.
- GenresPlays
95 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 22, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 10, 2022
Não era preciso ***** ** *******.
November 26, 2021
It seems that any narrative (either a play or a story) which has the slightest trace of a penguin in, could fascinate me immensely! However, to be fair, it's the plot and the characters that are impressive.
It's said that we learn the most important lessons in our life through hard times, it's true. Yet, there are times that you find yourself looking at a photo, listening to a song, reading a sentence in a book... and then suddenly you feel "it was taken/sung/written just for you, that minute. Sort of spoke to you across time", and you realize you needed this, this tiny push, to come to a new understanding of your surrounding, of people around you, to know that you need a change, even a small one, you need to change your direction, discover new things, pay attention to new people, things and people who were almost invisible just a short while ago, because you were so busy with the worthless ones or simply the wrong ones, but now it's time, you need to leave your comfort zone, take a new route, enjoy the previously-unnoticed things, and having become undaunted, find your new life through your new journey... be it gratifying or irksome, you'll see the things which were left unseen before, will you become a wiser version of yourself? It would be great, although it does not really matter, at that moment you only need to forget your fears, to be determined to continue... ant then you'll see the light, when you least expect it.
" Take the worst of your life, turn it round. Laugh at it. Cos it can’t do any harm, can it? No one ever died of a joke. "
It's said that we learn the most important lessons in our life through hard times, it's true. Yet, there are times that you find yourself looking at a photo, listening to a song, reading a sentence in a book... and then suddenly you feel "it was taken/sung/written just for you, that minute. Sort of spoke to you across time", and you realize you needed this, this tiny push, to come to a new understanding of your surrounding, of people around you, to know that you need a change, even a small one, you need to change your direction, discover new things, pay attention to new people, things and people who were almost invisible just a short while ago, because you were so busy with the worthless ones or simply the wrong ones, but now it's time, you need to leave your comfort zone, take a new route, enjoy the previously-unnoticed things, and having become undaunted, find your new life through your new journey... be it gratifying or irksome, you'll see the things which were left unseen before, will you become a wiser version of yourself? It would be great, although it does not really matter, at that moment you only need to forget your fears, to be determined to continue... ant then you'll see the light, when you least expect it.
" Take the worst of your life, turn it round. Laugh at it. Cos it can’t do any harm, can it? No one ever died of a joke. "
July 2, 2022
A re-read; Wells has a wonderfully eccentric outlook, and his characters are both quirky and endearing. The two monologues included in this volume are also fun.
April 11, 2022
It's late at night, you're tediously zapping through channels on your TV. You catch a british sitcom with seems decent enough to burn some minutes off your lifespan; but you don't know this show, you lack the context for exactly who these people are, what is going on or who, if anybody, are you meant to be rooting for. The plot unfolds such as you would expect from such a show, and it seems like a few character arcs are either ending or reaching their climax, but you haven't really been along for the journey, so you're not that invested in any resolutions. When the episode ends, you turn the TV off and don't think about the show ever again.
You log onto your laptop and someone has sent you a Wattpad link, "this should be goo". To your surprise, it actually is. Quite an amusing parody of 2000s-2010s goth culture plays out in front of you, reminiscent of My Immortal, but more of a personal monologue instead of a weird mash-up fanfiction. It's actually pretty amusing, albeit somewhat dated.
I don't have it in me to keep up the tone for the final play, it's about wanking in space. The connecting thread of these 3 short plays seems to be the figure of the Lonely Homossexual British Man, in wildly different contexts, different arcs, but all with a strange fixation on sex and masturbation. The first two seem to touch on the cycle of life and death, but taken as a whole, below the artifice and setdressing, these 3 are really about the condition of a lustful, lonely, gay brit trying to cope, and not really much else.
You log onto your laptop and someone has sent you a Wattpad link, "this should be goo". To your surprise, it actually is. Quite an amusing parody of 2000s-2010s goth culture plays out in front of you, reminiscent of My Immortal, but more of a personal monologue instead of a weird mash-up fanfiction. It's actually pretty amusing, albeit somewhat dated.
I don't have it in me to keep up the tone for the final play, it's about wanking in space. The connecting thread of these 3 short plays seems to be the figure of the Lonely Homossexual British Man, in wildly different contexts, different arcs, but all with a strange fixation on sex and masturbation. The first two seem to touch on the cycle of life and death, but taken as a whole, below the artifice and setdressing, these 3 are really about the condition of a lustful, lonely, gay brit trying to cope, and not really much else.
January 7, 2017
A re-read; Wells has a wonderfully eccentric outlook, and his characters are both quirky and endearing. The two monologues included in this volume are also fun.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews