Johnny’s Midnight Goggles Trilogy
“The One, the Holy Grail of the Brighton Festival. magical, theatrical genius.”
– Brighton Magazine on Johnny’s Midnight Goggles.
Johnny’s Midnight Goggles, Finkelstein’s Castle and Brian And The Angel form a trilogy of larger than life works for actor-singer-musicians, conceived, written and composed by Pete M Wyer.
The excerpt you can hear on this page is from the opening of Johnny’s Midnight Goggles, read by actor/bass-baritone Jeremy Milner
How It All Began:
“Johnny’s Midnight Goggles began on a balcony in the south of France, when I looked up one day and saw a mysterious black camel in the nearby sports field, which soon disappeared. A little later, after they let me out of the psychiatric ward, I wrote down my experiences and set them to music and gave them to actor/singer Matthew Sharp, I hoped he wouldn’t discover the bomb-carrying dwarves on page 4 until after I’d departed…. to my amazement, both he, and director/producer Bill Banks-Jones enjoyed this brand of insanity – I spent a further four weeks, holed up, writing – just me and that black camel – and eventually emerged with a completed script and score.”
Johnny’s Midnight Goggles was first performed as a one-man show, by cellist and baritone, Matthew Sharp in 2008 at the Brighton Festival as a SharpWire/Tete a Tete co-production supported by Brighton Festival and Caravan. It was subsequently recorded by baritone, Jeremy Milner, in 2010.
In 2011, supported by the National Theatre Studio Pete adapted it to a fully scored production (it had previously relied on a combination of pre-recorded music and solo cello) with additional characters, twists, turns and subplots, directed by Ria Parry. Production of the show is currently in development.
The sequel, Finkelstein’s Castle, also written and composed by Pete, was premiered at the Brighton Festival, 2009.
The third part of the trilogy, Brian And The Angel, is currently in development.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.