Quentin Crisp - Naked Hope

Mark Farrelly brings Quentin Crisp - Naked Hope to The Old Joint Stock Pub & Theatre on Wednesday 21 October, a solo play he wrote and performs himself. It's a one-man show about Quentin Crisp, one of the most singular figures of the twentieth century. Crisp was openly gay as early as the 1930s and spent decades being beaten up on London's streets for refusing to be anything less than himself, long before he became a global name through The Naked Civil Servant.

Farrelly catches him at two different stages of his life. One is Crisp alone in his Chelsea flat in the 1960s, convinced that life has passed him by. The other is thirty years later, performing An Evening with Quentin Crisp in New York. The play is packed with his witty gems on everything from cleaning to marriage, and it's drawn from an Off-Broadway original that's still running after its hundredth performance.

Farrelly is an experienced stage actor; his West End credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opposite Matthew Kelly. He wrote and performs the piece, and it's directed by Linda Marlowe.

It runs for 75 minutes with no interval, so you're in and out in a single stretch. Tickets are £16 full price, and the show starts at 8:00pm at The Old Joint Stock Pub & Theatre, 4 Temple Row West, Birmingham, B2 5NY.