The play with songs is set in one of the guest houses on the seafront and tells the story of the manager, the cleaner and the various people staying there. It was previewed a year ago in one of the pubs in Brighton. That contained probably half the story and songs and most of the same cast.
The cast included ex Eastender Lee Ross and Dr Whos assistants boyfriend Arthur Darvill. It was also nice to see Jeff Rawle as the grumpy man on the pier. Marks role was limited to being in the backing band. I think he got to sing a couple of songs however most of the songs were sung by members of the cast. His reading of "I live in this place" brought new meaning to the lyrics as he hovered behind the manager of this run down residence. Whenever he stepped up to the mic, you could see he wanted to make some wisecrack to the audience. He never did though.
The stories themselves were short looks at different aspects of love, from unrequited to new and old. There was the manager who fancied his cleaner even though she was leaving to go to college There was the young couple getting ready to do it for the first time and the old couple for whom it was all going wrong. As you would expect from something to do with Mark, there was at least one junkie trying to borrow money from an old boyfriend. The most touching story was the man on the pier. He starts chatting to the manager before going off on a bit of "taxi driver" style rant about the world in general. Finally he admits he lost his job a couple of months ago but hasn't had the heart to tell his wife. Even though he thinks she probably knows already.
The songs all went down well. Even though they were mostly sung by British women you could tell they were Marks compositions. I would have thought that "The blood ..." from Klamath would have been one of them, but it wasn't.
I believe it is currently playing in Germany without Mark and in German.
