The Missing Leg, a new absurdist play of dance and protuberances by Peter Mortimer, comes to Tyneside in March.
When Sever loses a leg, his compatriot Carp offers to go in search of the errant limb, taking with him Sever’s dance-crazed and protuberance-obsessed fiancée Dorothy. Seven years later the two return. But what has changed? And is the one-legged Sever still asleep under his tartan blanket (Clan Macpherson)?
The new play follows in the footsteps of Mortimer’s other absurdist pieces, She’s on Toast (2014), The Stolen Rubber Band (2015), The Plughole (2013), Marmite (2012) and A Parcel for Mr Smith (2015).
This new "opus", we are told, contains an odd number of legs—in both senses of the phrase. It also boasts a brace of duck-billed platypuses (or platypi, perhaps?), an odyssey to Carshalton, a voraciously physical female and the most outrageous song in the world. (Among other things.)
Produced as always by Cloud Nine Theatre, the cast is Dylan Mortimer, Zoe Hakin (An Excess of Overcoats) and newcomer to the company, Finbar Healey. Each performance will be preceded by music by local musicians.
The Missing Leg tours to The Salt House in Cullercoats (9 March), The Low Lights in North Shields (10 and 11 March), Flat Caps Coffee in Carliol Square in Newcastle (12 March) and Tyne Bank Brewery in Walker Road, Newcastle (18 March). All performances are at 7:30 except Cullercoats (8:00). All tickets are £7.