An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein

One Nanaimo Performance Only
April 25 2009

You are invited into the darkly comic world of Shel Silverstein. Ponomo Productions presents An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein, a provocative, farcical, cynical, and sometimes raunchy look into human relationships and personal interactions, highlighting the late, great author's incredible talent and irreverent wit.

Perhaps best known as a songwriter ("Sylvia’s Mother," "The Unicorn") and a children’s author ("The Light in the Attic"), Silverstein had a twisted side that is showcased in this hilarious series of vignettes. The five skits feature a cast of unlikely and neurotic characters, from a husband obsessing that his wife is a bag lady, to a father tormenting his daughter on her birthday with hints of bizarre gifts, to a husband and wife enacting the wife's disturbing fantasies of a shipwreck, to a blind blues man and his talking dog. Silverstein creates a gleeful and macabre evening, filled with verbal and physical slapstick, surprising twists on ordinary situations woven into an outrageous tapestry of human interaction.

In addition to these poignant and zany sketches, the gifted local duo of Antonio Gradanti and Bill Miner will showcase the eclectic nature of Silverstein's creativity by performing some of his greatest musical hits (including the immortal "A Boy Named Sue") plus poetry from his many books of children’s poems.

Presented as part of Western Edge Theatre's Off-the-Cuff series of special events, An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein plays for one performance only on Saturday, April 25th at 7:30 p.m. at the Nanaimo Entertainment Centre (46 Nicol Street). Tickets are available at 250-325-7777 or 1-888-320-3343, at Falconer Books in the Port Place Mall, and at the door.