Rehearsals have begun for the world premiere production of musical comedy Insane Animals, which runs here at HOME, Friday 28 February – Saturday 14 March 2020. The show is written by cult cabaret duo Bourgeois & Maurice and features a cast of eight high-energy low-brow actor-musician misfits.
Insane Animals marks an artistic departure for sequin-soaked weirdos Bourgeois & Maurice, aka George Heyworth and Liv Morris, who are leading lights of the UK’s alternative performance scene, known for their glamorous and satirical double act. This new musical sees them writing for the first time for a large cast, tackling bigger themes, and with a full band. It also marks their first time to actually rehearse a show.
Billed as ‘an epic joyride from the dawn of civilisation to the sequinned near future’, Insane Animals is an outrageous larger-than-life time-travelling musical comedy in which two hyper-glam aliens arrive from a faraway galaxy to rescue present-day earth from impending political, environmental, and social doom. Bourgeois & Maurice are here to help the human race live forever!
This queer unravelling of past and present, fact and fiction, life and death, is directed by Philip McMahon, who has just been named as Creative Director for Ireland’s entry in the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest, to be staged in Rotterdam in May. Philip is co-director of one of Ireland’s most exciting theatre companies, THISISPOPBABY, whose shows over the past 13 years – including Panti Bliss’s High Heels in Low Places which played at HOME in 2017 – have played to over 250,000 people all over the world.
Musical Director is composer, performer and multi-instrumentalist Victoria Falconer, who was recently nominated for Best Musical Director in the prestigious Sydney Theatre Awards for her work on hit musical Once, and is also part of the ensemble and band.
The eight-strong cast is completed by Lockie Chapman, Emer Dineen, Evie Jones, Kayed Mohamed-Mason, and Jarrad Payne.
The creatives on the show include Set Designer Michael Hankin, who won a Sydney Theatre Award for his design on Taylor Mac’s Hir; Lighting Designer Sinéad McKenna, twice an Irish Times Theatre Awards winner who has worked extensively in Ireland and in London, most recently at the Donmar Warehouse on Teenage Dick; Costume Designer Julian Smith, who is a long-time collaborator of Bourgeois & Maurice and who also designs costumes for Beth Ditto and Crystal from RuPaul’s Drag Race; make-up designer Andrew Gallimore, a Manchester Metropolitan University graduate, who has regularly collaborated with Rankin, Björk and Kylie among others; Choreographer Carl Harrison, who was born in Manchester and has worked with Punchdrunk Theatre; Assistant Director Heather Carroll, who was Assistant Director on our co-production with Unlimited Theatre and RashDash of Future Bodies in autumn 2018; and Sound Designer Kate Harvey. The Casting Director is Will Burton CDG, who was the Casting Director of the Olivier Award-winning Matilda, and also cast major productions including In The Heights, Jesus Christ Superstar, Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, Everyone’s Talking About Jamie, and Mary Poppins Returns.
Tickets are on sale now for Insane Animals, for more information book here.