Nellie Pastas Opera Cocktail
Devised and performed by Nola Rae and Michael Popper
From an original idea by Nola Rae
With thanks to Aranka Sestak
Directed by John Mowat
Design Matthew Ridout
Music by Giacomo Puccini and W. A. Mozart
If music be the food of love, is opera loves indigestion?
Nellie Pastas Opera Cocktail, set in a dingy dressing room under a second rate opera house stage, is a study of two misfits who meet in confusion and end up in a farce.
Hapless Nellie Pasta (Nola), a dresser to a tetchy door slamming diva, carries out her backstage routine with dreamy incompetence until an insult too far makes her seek revenge.
George Biscuit (Michael), opera fan and eccentric, wants the divas autograph and finds himself waiting for her in Nellies messy realm. Fantasy grips him.
When he encounters Nellie in person, he believes she is his diva and Biscuits joy knows no bounds. Nellies only thought is to escape Biscuit before she is found out and if she sings, she will be.
It could lead to murder......opera style.
A cocktail of confusion. A panic of Puccini.
A taste of Tosca. Gone for a song.
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