Prague Fringe 2015
Harry Gooch’s Three Star Show
Harry Gooch (England)
Genre: Solo Show
Venue: Museum of Alchemists
Festival: Prague Fringe
Low Down
Actor and improviser Harry Gooch (Clive Anderson’s Guessing Game, BBC Radio) returns to Prague to present three brand new character monologues: Can self-help guru Chad Courtney make your life a success (a bit like his)? Will spiritualist and psychic Martin Meacher manage to communicate with anyone at all? What brings Italian poet and odd-job-man Guido Pomodorini to the stage, and what lessons can we learn from his ‘mistakes on the love’?
Review
Actor and improviser Harry Gooch returns to Prague to present three brand new character monologues.
The Three Stars in this wonderfully witty interactive improvisational show are all Harry Gooch doing three distinctly manic presentations.
The first star is the Italian romantic poet Guido. Guido starts off by telling us that when he was a baby in his mama’s arms she told him that he was a poet. Her words of encouragement enable him to follow his dreams and as a man he is a poet with distinction and charm who wants to teach us that we too can be poets. Using random words gathered from different members of the audience, to very funny effect. In our case the words were dolphin, apple and love. Guido combines these words to create: “Because I love my dolphin I gave him an apple.” This elemental found poem proves that we too can compose poetry with encouragement.
The second star, dressed in a plaid suit jacket, is an iconic mentalist is of hilarious, but questionable, authenticity. With audience participation the Mentalist in an intriguingly soft English accented voice entices a member of the audience to tell him his secrets, which include his occupation and martial status. His antics of getting this chap to tell his secrets is very hilarious.
The third star is a typically arrogant, American self-help guru with a Mid-Western drawl, exhorting an audience member to transcend her life using "tools" that he got from audience suggestions. Our crowd suggested knowledge, confidence and love and the guru used these to get her to fulfill the life long dream that he said she had, of being a princess in a castle with a pony.
An excellent pianist and singer in tuxedos presenting standards from the Great American Songbook such as Fly Me To The Moon, Witchcraft, and This Must Be Love with style and casual grace separate the scenes. I was seriously envious of the singer for his two-tone, black and white patent leather shoes as well as his beautiful voice.
Mr. Gooch has wonderful energy that he shares with the audience in an entertaining way. Each character has a different costume, hairstyle and accent but it is the accomplished acting that makes you wonder where this guy came from and where the last guy went.
