HUNCHtheatre presents ‘Legend of the Holy Drinker’

HUNCHtheatre bring you a new show inspired by Austrian writer Joseph Roth’s neglected 1939 masterpiece, ‘The Legend of the Holy Drinker’. It is an urgent and adrenalised tale of homelessness, addiction, immigration and miracles in a big city.

Andreas is a total outcast: homeless, an alcoholic, an illegal immigrant and ex-prisoner. One day he is given a large sum of money by a benevolent stranger. This begins a chain of magical events as he enjoys the highs and low of London life, loses his money, gets it again, bumps into friends he thought had disappeared from his life, confronts his dark past and tries to enjoy his final three weeks of fragile happiness.

Joseph Roth is now recognised as a towering genius of twentieth century literature. He was a prolific journalist and novelist, moving around Europe as a refugee in the 1920s and 30s. His masterpieces ‘The Radetsky March’ and ‘Job’ are now widely translated and well known. ‘The Legend of the Holy Drinker’ is the last thing he ever wrote, as he was dying from alcohol poisoning in Paris in 1939. It is highly autobiographical, his final will and testament, his final message to the world – hopeful, playful, but brutal. We want to contribute to the rehabilitation of Roth, celebrating him as a writer for our time: describing the harsh and magical human experience against a background of political upheaval.

HUNCHtheatre has assembled a unique team of artists, many of them political refugees from across Europe, to update this text to the realities of London life in 2020. They are mixing this autobiographical text with our experiences to create our own personal message to the world. We are working with acclaimed Belarusian actor and political refugee Oleg Sidorchik, who won huge praise for his performance of King Lear at Shakespeare’s Globe. They are collaborating with several homeless charities (including Tap London), charities that helps immigrants (Hackney CVS) and local addiction centres (Turning Point). They are consulting with these charities, doing special performances in their centres, conducting post-show discussions and collecting money at the door. This will create a totally authentic, darkly funny and unsentimental look at homelessness, addiction and immigration in our society.

HUNCHtheatre is an international theatre company based in London, founded by award-winning director Vladimir Shcherban from Belarus and award-winning playwright and actor Oliver Bennett, from London. Their ethos is to mix European and British aesthetics, finding neglected European texts and re-contextualising them into the modern world to see how they resonate. Their first show was an adaptation of neglected nineteenth century Russian novel ‘A Hero Of Our Time’ by Mikhail Lermontov. They started performing the show in a corner of a living room in London to invited audiences of 10 people at a time. This quickly snowballed – they were invited to perform in the basement of the Karma Sanctum Hotel in Soho, then Edinburgh Festival, a run at the Arcola Theatre for a month, then festivals in St Petersburg, Cologne, Minsk and Prague. The show was a critical and commercial success and was listed as one of the best shows of 2018 by Broadway World.