THE LIST - 15-22 August 2002
PREVIEW

PEA GREEN BOAT
Mince or quince?

An owl wakes adrift at sea in a curiously coloured boat accompanied bya cat, its natural predator. There's some cash lying around in the hull as well as a small guitar and, rather disturbingly, some honey. And you may ask yourself: 'Well... how did I get here?'

At least, that's what Stewart Lee would do. Having temporarily lost his Herring, he's obviously had time on his hands to watch a lot of TV (collaborating on Jerry Springer- The Opera), write a novel (The Perfect Fool) and, perhaps most importantly of all, ponder Edward Lear's classic nonsense rhyme 'The Owl And The Pussycat' and taken it on a journey of its own.

Using the multimedia approach (slides, music and, er, some water), Lee has been commissioned by his Springer collaborators, the Battersea Arts Centre, to ask all the important questions: was this just an exercise in meaningless poetic whimsy or something more sinister than that (strange naval experiments are darkly hinted at)? And just what is a 'runcible spoon'?
Find out now. (Richard Rees)