Written and Performed by Iain Heggie
With Tyler Collins
Music by Christine Bovill and Tyler Collins
Lyrics by Iain Heggie
Directed by Alasdair Hawthorn
Presented by Open Book - Plays by Writers in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre

The English premiere of a new solo performance by award-winning playwright Iain Heggie

Sundays and Mondays, 4, 5, 11, 12, 18 and 19 October 2009

Multi-award-winning playwright Iain Heggie brings his new solo performance of monologues and music to the Finborough Theatre for a limited Sunday and Monday run of six performances.

In Wide Asleep, Iain Heggie takes us on a hilarious, touching and horribly truthful tour of everyday reality. In the monologue Neighbours, we meet 70 year old serial suicidalist 6’4” Ann Marie, the first sex change in Scotland; in Friends, a casual visit goes very badly wrong and reveals the terrors that are concealed in this least explored of our relationships; and Dreams features a comedy nightmare where a gang of wild dildoes go on the rampage. The pursuit of love is explored in Iain’s witty and dark songs, specially written for the show, like 1,000 Strangers, Personal Ad, The Park (Ode to Self-Pity) and The Son I Never Had (Don’t Fall In Love With A Writer)…

Wide Asleep is presented as a companion piece to the English premiere of his sell-out Scottish success The Tobacco Merchant’s Lawyer, playing a four week limited season at the Finborough Theatre from Tuesday, 29 September 2009.

One of Scotland's leading playwrights, award-winning playwright Iain Heggie was born in Glasgow in 1953. His Mobil prize-winning play, A Wholly Healthy Glasgow (1988), and his John Whiting award-winning play, American Bagpipes (1989), both premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and were later seen at The Royal Court. His short plays, The Sex Comedies (1993), have been produced many times in London, Scotland, Germany and Austria. His other plays include An Experienced Woman Gives Advice (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, and Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh), an adaptation of Moliere's Don Juan (Tour of Britain and Ireland 2001), an adaptation of Marivaux' Double Inconstancy (2003) retitled as Love Freaks (Tron Theatre, Glasgow), and King of Scotland (2001) and Wiping My Mother's Arse (2002) which both premiered at the Edinburgh Festival and won Fringe First awards. His latest play Global Warming Is Gay (2008) was performed by students of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where Iain is a regular teacher of acting, specializing in improvisation.

The Press on Iain Heggie
“The dialogue cuts into paradox, swagger and self-defense as keenly as a surgeon's knife.” The Observer.
“Heggie's trademark raw and eloquent style” The Scotsman
"Heggie's cut-across dialogue crackles with life; fast, funny, foulmouthed." Times Educational Supplement
“The capricious cut-and-thrust of Heggie's dialogue” The Independent
“Iain Heggie…strikes exactly the right note of everyday lunacy.” The Scotsman

The Press on Iain’s previous one man show Iain Heggie Exposes Himself.
“Iain Heggie is very good company.” The List ****
“Iain Heggie is funny,,,,and witty. Perfectly crafted stories.” The Guardian.
“A great mimic.” The Scotsman.

The Press on Wide Asleep
"The atmosphere of the stories and songs is wry, weird, witty, slightly surreal and often full of sadness. The songs – with titles such as Nice Part Of Hell, and Personal Ad – are about the loss of love and the search for love, or for sex; the monologues dwell more on friendship, and on Heggie's relationships with his neighbours. And both strands help to create a mood of satirical self-mockery and sheer imaginative daring that confirms Heggie as the inheritor of some of the richest strands in Glasgow urban culture, and in wider European theatre and song.

Imagine Alasdair Gray and Alexander Trocchi with a touch of Jacques Brel; all sung by Heggie in a voice that lacks polish and poise, but is full of intensity and edge, particularly in its lower registers...But Heggie is a writer whose work always matters; and if music theatre in Scotland is moving on, then this show should be seen as a vital part of that search for new ways of reaching audiences, in new times." Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman