After the national success of his long-running show Neil Brand Presents Buster Keaton, the composer/writer/broadcaster/musician returns with an all-new show about the immortal comedy duo so recently portrayed in the hit film Stan and Ollie.
From their earliest days on opposite sides of the Atlantic in Music Hall and on the stage, to their individual comedy films before they were paired up by Hal Roach, and on to their silent masterpieces before the arrival of sound, Neil will tell the touching story of the world’s greatest comedy team, who could not have been two more different men!
“Whether your interest is musical, historical, filmographic, or none of the above, Neil Brand is certainly worth your time” – Edinburgh Fringe
Fully illustrated with stills, clips (both silent and sound) and Neil’s superlative piano accompaniment and culminating in two of the Boys’ best silent short films, Big Business and Liberty, this is a show that promises gales of laughter throughout, as well as getting under the skin of two warm, funny men who continue to make the world laugh when it needs it most.
“Assisted by the trilling wit and polish of Brand’s lightning-fingered accompaniment, the sheer finesse of each successive slapstick selection works its magic on the audience and the laughter flows more and more freely”- The Telegraph
ABOUT NEIL BRAND
Over the last four decades Neil Brand has established himself and is acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost experts on the history and influence of the birth of the motion picture industry and the advent of the silent movies.
During his long and distinguished career as a composer, musician, broadcaster and presenter, his body of work is quite extraordinary.As a composer, his credits include over a hundred original radio dramas, documentaries and feature series. Working with the BBC, Channel 4 and his work for radio, TV, films, musicals, concert dramas, his music has been heard extensively and his live performances have been featured in over 30 countries.
He has composed the orchestral scores for the classic silent movies of Hitchcock, Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks & Jackie Coogan and the adaptation of the classic novels for symphony orchestra and choir Dickens’s “Christmas Carol”, “The Wind in the Willows” and “The Hound of the Baskervilles”.
As the writer, presenter and pianist, he has created five major television series covering the history of the music of the cinema, musicals and tv. As author and writer, he has, for fifteen years, written the music and lyrics for Christmas shows for a number of children’s theatre productions in the UK. He has also written twenty original radio plays and a long-running radio sitcom, The Big Broadcast, plus several other radio series.
