CityLife

Preview: Way Out West, The Sea Whispered Me - Greenroom

Morecambe and Wise may be much-loved household names here – but in Chicago?

Nonetheless, the duo play a big part in the new show from Chicago-based collaborative performance duo Cupola Bobber, along with Gilbert And George, Laurel And Hardy. The show, called Way Out West, The Sea Whispered Me, was put together at their home studio, and sprung from a year-long fellowship the duo undertook in 2008 at Lancaster’s Nuffield Theatre as International Artists In Residence.

“We’d already heard of Laurel and Hardy, they were international stars,” says co-founder Stephen Fiehn, “We have a background in arts so we’d heard of Gilbert And George, although a lot of Americans haven’t. But neither of us had ever heard of Morecambe and Wise, which I’m sure sounds like heresy!

“But while we were at Lancaster we thought it would be interesting to walk from Morecambe to Blackpool and started to think about the role of the sea in British culture and the mythology, how the sea functions as a dwarfing muse of existential contemplation, a place of leisure, and as heartless destroyer.

“The first we heard of Morecambe and Wise was when we discovered the statue of Eric Morecambe in Morecambe. That was one of many instances where our lack of planning turned out to have some value.”

The show also examines British Edwardian sea-side resorts and the surrounding ‘work towns’, the disappeared sea-side town of Hallsands, the disappearing town of Dunwich, and 1930s dust bowl Kansas.

“I know it could all sound a bit arty and I know how you Brits hate that,” laughs Fiehn.

Way Out West, The Sea Whispered Me is at Greenroom on February 26, 2010.