This evening – a rare visit to The Cottesloe on a Tuesday evening – was the first time I saw Ken Campbell perform.
I was really smitten with this piece – I found it very funny. I think I got more out of it than Janie did, but she was fascinated enough to want to see more of his work after that.
One of the things that attracted us to the piece, apart from the weirdness of the blurb, which promised us – I paraphrase from various book blurbs available:
“Cathar heretics, a mysterious female French book thief and a Vietnamese violinist who does pig impressions”.
It would be difficult to say no to that, especially as we had booked to go to Vietnam a couple of months later.
Janie and I saw an early preview of the show; it didn’t get reviewed until October but we saw a preview in January.
There is a somewhat tepid Independent review of the piece by Robert Hanks available on-line – here.
Michael Coveney in the Observer liked it, perhaps because he got a name drop:
Coveney on Violin Time Sun, Oct 6, 1996 – 76 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Unusually, it doesn’t look as though The Guardian reviewed it.