Johnny McKnight & Julie Wilson Nimmo to Star in Random Accomplice's AND THE BEAT GOES ON

Stars of Tron's 2014 panto Miracle On 34 Parnie Street Johnny McKnight and Julie Wilson Nimmo reunite this March in a edgy new comedy from the brilliant Random Accomplice Theatre Company, Horsecross Arts and the pen of Olivier award-winner Stef Smith-a story of sequins, survival and Sonny & Cher: And The Beat Goes On.

Peter and Lily have a secret. They love Sonny & Cher, their favourite celebrity couple of all time. With a string of hits in the 1960s and a successful American variety TV show in the 1970s, Sonny and Cher were mismatched, they were camp; they were good honest fun.

Decades later, unstoppable mega-fans Peter and Lily are still listening to their records, still lip-syncing to their songs and still practicing their comedy routines every evening. But beneath their obsession with sparkle and showmanship is tragedy. And as dark truths start to pop their bubblegum act, it becomes clear not everything is quite as it seems...

The dark comedy will be performed by Random Accomplice artistic directors Julie Brown and Johnny McKnight alongside Julie Wilson Nimmo (Tron's Miracle On 34 Parnie Street), and will be directed by Kenny Miller, associate director for theatre for Horsecross Arts, the creative organisation behind Perth Concert Hall and Perth Theatre.

Playwright Stef Smith, best known for supplying the text for Oliver Award-winning show RoadKill, drew on her lifelong love of Cher when writing And The Beat Goes On. Speaking of the show, she said:

"I'm a lifelong fan of Cher; I'm interested in how she represents survival, even if only in pop culture terms. During her career she has been incredibly uncool but has always bounded back. I'm attracted to that wilfulness, that persistence and how she never took herself too seriously. I wanted to write something that used Sonny and Cher as a jumping off point rather than a write a biopic about them. I think Sonny and Cher represent a more innocent time, especially in the representation of famous couples. And I wanted to juxtapose this image of 'a perfect couple' with a couple who have no choice but to stay together; the idea that under something perfect is a very dark secret.

One of my other inspirations was Johnny and Julie themselves. I've been a big fan of Random Accomplice's work and have always enjoyed their diverse mixture of comedy and drama. I wanted to write them parts that allowed them to show the diversity of them as performers - a balance of lightness and darkness."

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