The Preston based Lancashire Fringe Festival reached about the half-way mark on its programme of events and continues to go from strength to strength. After having to abort a afternoon visit to the cinema due to buses failing to turn up on schedule, (that can wait until tomorrow), I headed to The Stanley Arms, in the city centre for a few beers and some pre-show food.
I have been to events at The Stanley Arms before, even participating, (as a poet), in a series of burlesque events there in 2017. (My Burlesque poem https://arthurchappell.wordpress.com/2022/05/11/burlesque-a-poem/ )
It was clear that Chris Singleton’s event had drawn a big audience. There was quite a scramble to bring in extra chairs to accommodate everyone arriving.
Chris’s deeply moving heartfelt monologue began deceptively as a life coaching lecture parody echoing the theme of the process of loss and grief can ultimately make us stronger after plunging us into the depths of despair and in many cases, depression. His use of music, poetry and Powerpoint was very well handled.
Chris had an idyllic family who travelled around together, in the UK, Europe and over the wider world. Their lives were thrown into turmoil when Chris’s father was diagnosed with bowel cancer, which eventually became inoperable, as the family faced the brutal reality of palliative care, and impending loss. The story moves through changing moods from the farcical comedy of getting in the wrong lift while trying to reach the ward to the growing realisation that they were losing their father.
Chris charts the emotional devastation wrought with great humour and pathos. He shows the last family photos of the family together, on a visit to a Yorkshire sculpture park, where gravel paths are not very good for pushing wheelchairs, as not being the best mementoes they could have been, as they are shot on a windswept overgrown picnic spot, with much more interesting features just out of shot, and the last image seen of his father showing his fair blown up sharply by the breeze.
After the loss of his father Chris faced ongoing drama, as in taking a portion of his ashes through customs to scatter in Canada where his daughter (Chris’s sister) lives. Chris takes great pride in that his father’s love of travel extended to his remains being spread around the World.
Chris was plunged into the depths of despair but built himself up to feel happy in his freedom and independence, showing his rented accommodation with pride as still very much his own even though he doesn’t actually own it. The theme was very much that what doesn’t destroy us has the potential to make us stronger.
As undoubtedly for many in the audience there was a great deal here to relate to for me. I have faced the long slow bedside vigil by the side of several relatives (though my father was snatched instantly without warning by a coronary heart attack aged 49 in 1978). I myself faced bowel cancer at the height of the Covid lockdown (much of Chris’s story is set in the year before Covid struck the UK). I was fortunate enough to come through but so many do not,
Chris makes his father into such a wonderful character that you are left with regret that you never met him personally, Chris has undoubtedly done him proud in presenting his story, and that of the whole family and Chris himself so well, with great humour and bravery.
A deeply moving show that is well worth seeing if you get a chance.
Thanks to Chris, to Garry Cook and all at Lancashire Fringe, and to friends I met up with pre and post show too.
Arthur Chappell
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