A Pie And A Pint And Museums At Night

We just wanted to say a huge ‘thank you’ to Higgidy Pies and Bedlam Brewery for the generous donations they’re making for our Museums at Night event, Two Halves of Guinness.

The idea for a pie, a pint and a performance came from Trevor Littledale, the star of the show (and our founder Chris’ brother) and since we all at the museum love to watch a show with a pie and a pint in our hands, we thought this was fab!

A Life Examined

The show centres on the well beloved actor Sir Alec Guinness’ introspection at the time of the release of Star Wars. Sir Alec himself was in no way fond of the movie, and worried that it would be his lasting swansong. He dreaded being remembered for a part he had no liking for. He’d had a career which had lasted several decades, and included roles such as the entire D'Ascoyne family in Kind Hearts and Coronets, the eponymous Man in the White Suit and Colonel Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai, the role for which he won his first Academy Award. 

Being immortalised as a mystic who spouted “florid, breathless and embarrassing” lines was something that made him “shrivel up a little.”

Guinness had converted to Catholicism in 1956 and tended to consider the role of a Jedi mystic something of a fraud. He said in an interview with Talk magazine while promoting his autobiography ‘A Positively Final Appearance’ that it was his idea to kill off Ben because: "I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo."

The show Two Halves of Guinness is Brighton Toy and Model Museum’s Museums at Night event. In the past we’ve had great fun with Museums at Night. It’s an opportunity for museums to do something a little out of the ordinary to appeal to people who might not necessarily be interested in museums and galleries to come along and get involved. One year your correspondent bought up all the Barbies and Sindys he could find in every charity shop so that we could make dresses, give them makeovers and make them a little more relatable.

It’s important that we thank our sponsors too. What would a pie, a pint and a performance be without a pie and a pint?

Higgidy Pies are a local pie company who make a variety of delicious pies and pastries, and they’ve given us enough pies (both veggie and meaty) to sustain the hungriest of audience member for the evening. (check out their website, they’re not stingy with their recipes for all kinds of pies, pastries and confectionary either!)

Likewise, Bedlam Brewery, again a local company making fine bitters,ales, and lagers who’re helping us out by letting us have crates of the stuff to share with our visitors on the night.

We really are grateful, as it’s contributions like these that let us do things that would otherwise be outside our scope thanks to expense and inconvenience. You guys are great and we’re looking forward to putting on many more events with your help.

To book your ticket, please follow this eventbrite link

Two Halves of Guinness at the Museum

Anyone less than 50 (and many people older) will have seen Star Wars. As well as seeing the movies, most of us will have collected the toys, models and other merchandise which went along with the film’s success.

Trevor Littledale by remyhunterphotography.co.uk

One of the film’s main protagonists (the donor/mentor according to Todorov and Propp) was Obi Wan Kenobi, a mystical wizard cum knight tutor played by famed British character actor Alec Guinness. Despite having worked on stage and in film for decades, Guinness was famously worried that his part in Star Wars would be his defining role, leaving his portrayal of the entire D’Ascoyne family in Kind Hearts and Coronets, of Sidney Stratton in The Man in the White Suit, and even his playing of Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, for which he won an academy award, forgotten. According to Guinness’ son Matthew, when Sir Alec met a child fan who said he had seen the Star Wars ‘a hundred times’ he said to the young chap “Well, do you think you could promise never to watch it again?”

The one man play Two Halves of Guinness, performed by Trevor Littledale, finds us meeting Guinness in a cosy bar as he faces crippling insecurity after taking part in the creation of the Sci-Fi epic. Not only does it inspect the actor’s personal anxieties, it also looks at the relationship he had with other British acting luminaries such as Olivier and Coward, his conversion to Catholicism, his upbringing, the war, and the premonitions he often had, leading to the warning he gave James Dean on the night before his fatal car accident.

Littledale characterises Guinness perfectly, using miniscule body movements and changes in expression and voice to become another character within the monologue. The ‘two halves’ of the title refers to the two distinct sides of Guinness’ personality; the dark, anxious, insecure side brought about by being born illegitimate to an alcoholic mother and never really knowing who his father was, being taken constantly from digs to boarding houses while he was growing up, adding to his sense of vulnerability. The other half, the lighter side, looks at his life as an entertainer. How, once he’d decided to become an actor, he simply looked up John Gielgud in the directory and phoned him to ask for acting lessons. Gielgud was unable to oblige personally, but the two became firm friends.

The play is being performed in Brighton Toy and Model Museum, a space which lends itself well to the performance as Trevor feels that the proximity of the audience to the actor adds vital intimacy to the play as it unfolds.

For booking information and to buy tickets for the show when it is staged in October, simply follow the link to Eventbrite

Blog by Dan Cash, opinions are author's own.