Thursday 25 November 2009
Only 3 of us went to see The Haunted Moustache at The Nuffield Theatre – Georgie, Janet and June.
It took place in The Studio which made for a very intimate setting. Not so much a play as a one man narrative, telling the story of the search for information about a moustache that had been left to the narrator, David Bramwell, by his great aunt.
The moustache had been owned by – and cut off by – Ambrose Oddfellow, the owner of a freak show. Along with the moustache was a medallion bearing the 3 words, Trust, Absolute and Unconditional.
David told us of his journey from a naïve polytechnic student with a 2.2 in geography to his heady days spent in Brighton at underground clubs, experiencing various drugs, religions and cultures. At one time, he had been the compere for a club where “entertainers” included odd characters with bags on their heads, those who discussed quantum physics with the audience and one who was covered in plaster of Paris and had to remain in the same position throughout the show as it hardened on his body.
During one of these shows, David had been slipped some LSD and he went off into hallucinations, one of them being a person who he believed to be Ambrose Oddfellow, sitting in the front row, wearing a cape and sporting a blue triangle on his head.
Later, by pure chance, he met Drako Zarhazar, an eccentric who had once modelled for Salvador Dali for his painting of The Crucifixion and who had appeared in Derek Jarman films. Unfortunately, he had suffered short term memory loss since a road accident had left him in a coma for 3 days. Drako has many tattoos and piercings, with bright blue eyebrows and a blue triangle on the top of his head……..
David realised that this was who he had seen whilst “tripping” and soon became friends with this enigmatic character. Drako explained to David that whilst in his coma he had been visited by an angel who had basically told him to “clean up his act”. When he emerged from the coma, Drako got himself off drugs and became a vegan and a celibate. However, he also said that the angel had given him three words and these had become so important to him that he had had them tattooed on his forearm. They were Trust, Absolute and Unconditional ………..
A most enjoyable evening. David was skilled at his story telling and kept us both interested and amused. His story was both unusual and sometimes puzzling. It began and ended with those three words – just coincidence? That would be stretching our imaginations just a little too far…..
Juniper Berry June
Branch Manager
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