On the 23rd June 2018 a rather special screening took place at the The Grand, Clapham.
The screening was organised by Markee and Gia, who put together an international shadow cast for the evening. Stephanie and I were lucky to be invited along to play space-Riff and space-Magenta once more.
We were also joined by the wonderful Patricia Quinn, who introduced the movie itself.
The Grand is an amazing space, originally opened as a music hall in 1900 before becoming a full time cinema in the 1950's and now functions as a live music venue, nightclub, theatre and event space. It was an honour to stand on the same stage that had hosted Oasis, Chuck Berry and The Jam amongst others. Wow.
The venue was packed with fans in costume as the pre-shows started around 7pm.
First pre-show was Kev McEwen as Frank performing "The WInner Take's It All", yes the ABBA song, which was greeted by great applause from the audience.
Next up we had Markee (De Saw) perform two songs from 'Shock Treatment', one on the musical saw (hence the name) and the other sung live. Again met with thunderous applause from the audience.
Gia and Markee then spoke a little about performing groups before handing the stage over to Max May Hem from the German performing group to take care of the few (19) virgins in the audience. Max had not given out much information on what he would be doing and his request for some bananas and a cucumber as props didn't help calm our nerves. His performance was perfectly judged though as he played a game or two with the virgins on stage which they all enjoyed thoroughly. You had to be there.
Last, but by no means least, the wonderful Patricia Quinn took to the stage to introduce the screening itself. The crowd went wild as she started the "Give me an R........", etc.
Then it was the turn of the international all-star shadow cast to take to the stage. Lot's of roles were shared and with the screen being back-projected it made for a different look to the show. Just very difficult to take images with hardly any light on the front of the cast. My only complaint would be the sound levels were so high (bass especially) that it was impossible to hear any audience participation talk back.
After the screening and one last Time Warp, there was an after party which ran to 3am apparently. We missed it as we had to head back on the trains, but we have heard many tales of the Rocky fans dancing the night away with the crowd from Royal Ascot, surreal to say the least.
A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone that took part in organising and the screening itself, it was one of the best nights at a movie screening for many years (not counting the BFI show which was also amazing).
If a picture is worth a thousand words, check out the 200,000 words below.
Reviewed by TimeWarpWebmaster Sunday, June 24th, 2018
Images from the evening taken by Dave, Steph and Kev.
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