FOLLOWING THE sell-out tour of Grumpy Old Women, Adele King (aka Twink ) will shortly return to the Town Hall with her all-new touring show Trading Faces (alias Who Gives A Tuck? ).
Trading Faces introduces us to 50-something dowdy Dublin dreamer Eve who has decided that the pathway to a new and exciting life is via cosmetic surgery - but will a new face, a tight tummy, and a ‘trout pout’ really make her dreams come true?
Laugh (if your Botox will allow ) and celebrate with Eve as she goes on this hilarious and often touching journey to realise her new look and discover Who Gives A Tuck?
The show is liberally sprinkled with sparkling gags that are sure to have the audience in stitches; “Next time I buy a bikini, it’ll be a three piece; a top, bottom and a blind fold!”, “I still have an hour glass figure - but all the sand has run to the bottom!”, “There were a few raised eyebrows when I suggested Botox”. But as King herself reveals over an evening phone conversation, amid all the jokes there is also a seam of real emotion running through Eve’s story.
“Like the other shows I’ve been doing over the past few years – Dirty Dusting, Menopause the Musical, Grumpy Old Women – it’s largely aimed at women,” she begins. “Plastic surgery is an interesting topic, seemingly millions of pounds a year are spent on it but you never meet anyone who’ll admit to having it done! A lot of women do identify with Eve and her predicament though.”
King expands on the character of Eve; “Eve isn’t happy with her lot. Her marriage is dreary, she’s overweight, and undervalued. So she starts thinking about getting cosmetic surgery, first she researches it online, though she hasn’t a clue about the net so there’s some great gags around that.
“She sums up the courage to make an appointment at a clinic but when she goes there she encounters this total battle-axe of a matron. At that point in the play we see Eve confront questions like, why does she want to have this surgery?
“But she gets the nerve to go through with it and when Act II opens we see her in the hospital getting ready for the operation. Whereas initially she was just thinking of getting a brow lift, now she has decided to go the whole hog and have a face-lift and tummy-tuck as well.”
Having summoned up the nerve to have the operation, Eve then finds it does not bring the instant happiness she hoped for.
King explains; “Once she has it all done Eve then finds out certain things about her husband and son which leave her questioning who did she have the operation for, so the play is quite poignant at that point. It does pick up again and goes on to be really funny in the build-up to the final curtain. It guarantees a good night out and with all the doom and gloom going on these days, people really need that.”
The play’s principal author is Ann Ford. While her name may not be familiar to Irish audiences she’s a seasoned comedy writer, as King reveals.
“Ann has written a lot on sitcoms with the BBC,” she says. “She’s been a big fan of mine for ages and always comes over to see my shows. She wrote this one specially for me, having seen the work I was doing over the last few years, it’s like she took some of the best apsects of the other shows and remoulded them into this new story.
“Initially she wrote it as a one-woman show but I didn’t think it worked in that form so I argued strongly for it being expanded into a two-hander and once it was decided to do that everyone involved agreed that it was much better.”
Joining King in the show is Janet Phillips who previously played the role of solicitor June Pearson in Fair City. “Janet does great work in the show, she plays a range of characters throughout and she does it superbly,” King enthuses.
King also picks out another aspect of Trading Faces of which she is specially proud; “The other shows I’ve done in the past few years had all already been successful elsewhere, whether in the UK or US, before we did them in Ireland. What’s exciting about this is that we are the first ones to do it and it’s looking very much like it will go on to be produced elsewhere.
“I was talking to my friend the comic Sue Pollard and she was joking with me, ‘You lucky bugger, you got to do this first, you better not come to the UK with it, I want to do it when it comes here!’. There’s also interest in it from Australia and the US so this could very likely go on and be the same kind of success that those other shows were and, if it does, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that I was the one who originated the character of Eve!”
Audiences can find out ‘all about Eve’ when Trading Faces graces the Town Hall stage on Tuesday November 22 and Wednesday 23 at 8pm nightly.
Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
