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Pause with a Smile

Part of the Platform 18 programme

The second winner is Gareth Nicholls with his heart-warming show Pause with a Smile. Read more …

The show, featuring performers Gary McNair (who performed his show How Soon is Nigh last year as part of Platform 18) and Kieran Hurley, concerns coincidences which happen every day and make us stop to consider the possibilities. For example: have you heard the story of the farmer’s wife who lost her wedding ring only to find it forty years later inside a potato? Or the story of Martha whose first three husbands were all killed by lightning? Listen to a remarkable collection of true stories that explore coincidence and those moments in life that make us pause, if only for a second, and smile. The soundtrack to the show comes courtesy of Michael John McCarthy (Zoey Van Goey; Go Away Birds).


The critical consensus

The show is designed to make the audience pause…and smile. And to reflect on everyday coincidences that have occurred in our own lives, and about how we react to moments in time. Which it succeeds in doing with great charm, in a show that is as novel as it is heartwarming.

Alan Chadwick, STV, 07/04/2011

Aims to charm and beguile, rather than incite or inspire.

Shona Craven, Onstage Scotland, 08/04/2011

Given the quality of Nicholls’s writing, though, the final effect is profound; as if the existence of strange coincidences offered to our faithless times a last shred of possibility that behind the apparent chaos, some greater pattern of meaning is working itself out.

****(*)Joyce McMillan, 08/04/2011

Pause is a cheery whistle in the dark.

Gareth K Vile, The Skinny, 12/04/2011

Where and when?

The Arches, Glasgow from Tuesday April 5, 2011, until Saturday April 9, 2011. More info: www.thearches.co.uk

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Thursday April 14, 2011, until Sunday April 17, 2011. More info: www.traverse.co.uk

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