The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife

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When:

Wed 13 Oct ’10, 9:30pm–10:30pm	Saving
Thu 14 Oct ’10, 9:30pm–10:30pm	Saving
Fri 15 Oct ’10, 9:30pm–10:30pm	Saving
Sat 16 Oct ’10, 9:30pm–10:30pm	Saving

Where: The Basement, Lower Greys Avenue, Auckland CBD Show map

Restrictions: All Ages

Ticket Information:

General admission: $20.00
Concession: $15.00
Booking fees may apply

Websites:

Favourites:

Fireplace Recordings
naomibisley
callumes

The Dove Hunters present a surrealist Western musical by Sam Shepard, with music by Catherine Stone.

Starring Colleen Davis & Barnie Duncan. Featuring the musical talents of Tom Rodwell (Storehouse), Chris O'Connor (SJD, Don McGlashan), Hermione Johnson (Concert FM) & Phil Dryson (Benka Borodovsky Bordello Band).

Can a legend die? Or worse, slowly fade away into irrelevance? The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill is a surreal musical postcard from the inner landscape of the Old West; it mourns the obsolescence of heroes, showing them transfixed as relics in the mythic junkyard of American popular culture.

Another kind of love story, this Cowboy Operetta conjures Pecos Bill; the cowboy comic-book icon legendary for creating Texas, wrangling tornados and digging the Rio Grande, and his "mighty stimulatin’" catfish-riding bride Slue-Foot Sue. After an unfortunate incident involving a bucking bronco, Bill is forced to shoot Sue, and searches for a place to bury her.

Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sam Shepard (“the most original humorous poet in the American theatre,” according to the New Yorker), with music by Catherine Stone, The New York Times hailed its “mythical whimsy” while the New Yorker found it “haunting, funny, enriching.” Here Shepard mingles past, present and future into a pastiche of legend and actuality, with irreverent commentary on American heroes and heroics.

This new production of Pecos Bill boasts evocative new musical arrangements and improvisations; an off-center fusion of a honky-tonk fever dream and wistful western ballad ending up in unexpected new places. Wagon wheels and bones for percussion instruments, Flamenco and psychedelic guitar sounds, and the moan and wheeze of an accordion all combine to make an out of the ordinary Western soundscape.

Starring Colleen Davis (Burlesque As You Like It, Auckland Theatre Company, Shortland Street) with Barnie Duncan (Theatre Beating, The Jaquie Brown Diaries, Outrageous Fortune and The Hot Grits).

"No one knows better than Sam Shepard that the true American West is gone forever, but there may be no writer alive more gifted at reinventing it out of pure literary air." -Frank Rich, The New York Times.