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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2002 Reviews (26)Jack Pleasure Terry is unhappy. So is everybody that comes into contact with him. He is a 36 year old coach driver, played by Andy Fox, who has left his wife and lives on his father's couch. He does have dreams, though. As he watches numerous blue movies, he dreams of going to New York to begin a career as porn star, Jack Pleasure. This sounds like the basis for a light comedy but it is as much a drama about why Jack has left the unbelievably forgiving Susan and why his mother left his father, Bill. The men are both maudlin while Lucy Ward's Susan is upbeat and so is patient Auntie Brenda who would like to take her sister's place with Bill. Terry has a knack of attacking everybody, even rather amusingly, his passengers. His battles with his poor idealistic father and ex-wife do him little credit and it is inevitable that his dream will prove another failure; if only because he wants to take up his new career at too advanced an age. This is a piece of gritty realism about a pig-headed man, with a touch of Billy Liar about it. Whether he can live happily ever after as the ending suggests is a moot point. You hope for the sake of his poor, abused relations that he can. Philip Fisher |
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