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THE OPENING night of top-drawer literary festival Archway With Words hosted a scratch reading of Ivor Cutler’s previously unstaged play The Fleas, which was sent to actor Bill Patterson in 1978. He was a friend of Cutler and says that he saw him as “a sort of Scottish actor who can get things done.”
Cutler is a cult figure —“he was all meat and no potatoes,” Robert Wyatt has said of him — known for drawing white chalk circles around dogs’ doings on Holloway Road and his songs, radio performances and poetry are all a quirky joy.
The night opened with Patterson reading several of Cutler’s poems and the latter’s distinct voice was caught well in Patterson’s unique timbre. The play itself was fleeting — biting and fun — with Patterson reading stage directions as three actors read their parts.
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