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Vulcan 7

King's Theatre, Edinburgh

Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer shot to fame in the 1980s with The Comic Strip Presents… and as Vyvyan and Neil in the massive cult classic The Young Ones. They also starred together in Filthy, Rich and Catflap on television and played in the spoof band Bad News. They co-star in this hilarious new comedy about the actor’s life, which they have also co-written. Read more …

Gary Savage and Hugh Delavois were students at RADA together. Now in their sixties, they meet in an Icelandic wasteland, on the set of a fantasy movie.

Hugh has had a plodding career but has landed the role of Vulcan’s butler - a small but regular role - and he's making his seventh film for the franchise. Gary is a one-time Hollywood A-lister who has fallen on lean times, and is playing a guest monster with four hours in make-up and one word in the script.

Sparks fly inside the trailer as old wounds are opened. Leela, a runner, attempts to keep the peace between them, but outside the trailer things are not going to plan either: the director’s gone AWOL, the catering truck’s on the wrong side of a ravine, and the volcanic activity is growing more and more lively by the minute…


The critical consensus

The play provokes ripples of laughter for nigh on two hours.

***(*)(*)Peter Callaghan, Review Sphere, 06/11/2018

Hugh and Gary’s co-dependent sparring is a classic Brit-com set-up.

***(*)(*)Neil Cooper, Coffee-Table Notes, 06/11/2018

Vulcan 7 is good, but it could have been a lot more than it is.

***(*)(*)Tom Ralphs, The Reviews Hub, 06/11/2018

In the end it is neither as funny nor as clever as the audience desperately want it to be.

***(*)(*)Hugh Simpson, All Edinburgh Theatre, 06/11/2018

Ade Edmondson and Nigel Planer's Sci-Fi comedy is an acute look at fame and ageing.

****(*)Dominic Corr, The Skinny, 09/11/2018

Vulcan 7 is not a great play, in any sense; and its interminable showbiz running gag about Daniel Day Lewis stops being funny long before the end. Yet its vision of two ageing men looking back in mutual dislike and regret, fighting over the paternity of whatever future there might be, and then perhaps facing the end together, is held together by a combination of talent and chemistry that remains unique, 30 years on.

****(*)Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman, 10/11/2018

Where and when?

King's Theatre, Edinburgh from Monday November 5, 2018, until Saturday November 10, 2018. More info: http://www.edtheatres.com/kings

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