Although by the end of the piece I wanted to cuddle Uncle Napier, I didn’t feel the need to squeeze. Whether the play is liked or not, a promise has been kept and Blow’s uncle lives on at The Old Red Lion Theatre.
Simon Blow’s debut drama The Past Is A Tattoed Sailor, will have its world premiere at London’s Old Red Lion Theatre in August 2016. This fiercely witty and bittersweet drama is fictional but drawn heavily from Simon Blow’s relationship with his great-uncle Stephen Tennant. Simon is the grandson of aristocratic architect Detmar Blow and scion of a family never far from the newspaper columns, and The Past Is a Tattooed Sailor is unique excursion into a lost world of sparkling aphorism and gloriously eccentric characters. Past and present are one in the sleeping manor house where Uncle Napier lives in an eternal doze. Upper class boy Joshua has sought out his great-uncle, long taken to his bed and drifting in memories of his glowing adolescence. Joshua is having his own roaring twenties with new builder boyfriend Damien, but the burden of class weighs heavy over the young man, and ghosts … Read more
