‘I woke up early with the birds
to hand up sturdy planks of words
to my speech-slave, my tongue, to build
echoing halls of praise, light-filled….’

A Viking poet from Iceland sails around the North Sea, fighting, escaping, and delivering unforgivable insults in thunderous verse. Egil is the greatest of the Viking poets, and his adventures and poetry are recorded in one of the greatest Icelandic sagas. Peter Oswald performs his version written in English rhyming verse; it’s in three parts, of twenty minutes each. He performed the first part at Shakespeare’s Globe and York Minster – now he performs all three, from Egil’s close shave at York with Erik Bloodaxe, to his mad preposterous end in the bogs of Iceland.

Peter Oswald was recently awarded a travelling scholarship by the Society of Authors, who wrote ‘The astonishing Peter Oswald…. his subtle, layered story-telling and dazzling use of language mark him out.’

On Monday 7th November, Egil will be followed by a new comedy, Sorry About The Poetry. A famous Italian poet of the Renaissance sends a love poem, via his half-crazed servant Arlechino, to the woman he loves. The poem is rejected and the poet disintegrates. Arlechino has to save the situation, or his master will go mad and he will starve.

Devised and performed by Howard Gayton and Peter Oswald, and written by Peter Oswald, this hour-long comedy dives into the depths of the Commedia tradition of masked theatre and bursts back up into the modern day.

Howard Gayton was director of the highly successful Commedia company Ophaboom. Peter Oswald was writer in residence at Shakespeare’s Globe from 1998 to 2005.

This is a work in progress. By November 7th we will have done seven or eight scratch performances, so this will be the culmination of our initial development process.

On Monday 7th Howard will accompany Egil with mandolin and percussion.

https://www.bikeshedtheatre.co.uk