BOTTLENECK Comes to the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Tonight

Hightide Festival Theatre presents Bottleneck at the Edinburgh Fringe 2014

VENUE 300 - UNDERBELLY TOPSIDE - 13.30 - DAILY

'Am I a virgin? I think I am. I mean it went in her but it was floppy and it wasn't very nice so I think I'm a virgin. I'm going to say I am. Will look better on my Uni applications.'

Bottleneck by Luke Barnes, directed by Steven Atkinson and performed by James Cooney, returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, after a hit run in 2012, playing at Underbelly's Topside at 13.30 today 30 July - Sunday 24 August.

Liverpool, 1989. Greg is fourteen. He has just started secondary school. He earns pocket money sweeping hair up in the barbers. Girls are aliens. Liverpool FC are everything.

Bottleneck is a vibrant coming of age story about becoming a man through adventures big and small. It is about a notorious city, Liverpool. How the outside world views it and how it views the outside world. The story takes on a hilarious journey, which then culminates in the tragedy of the Hillsborough disaster. This is the 25th anniversary of Hillsborough where on 15th April 1989, 96 men, women and children lost their lives, the most serious tragedy in UK sporting history. We will be thinking of them and their families.

'Bottleneck proved such a popular and critical hit when we premiered it in 2012 and then toured it, it felt important to everybody involved that in 2014, 25 years on from the Hillsborough tragedy, that we continued to perform it and add to the remembrances of the 96 who tragically lost their lives.' (Steven Atkinson, Director and Artistic Director of HighTide Theatre Festival)

Luke Barnes was the Leverhulme Playwright on attachment to Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse theatres. His first play Chapel Street ran at the Old Red Lion in Liverpool and in Edinburgh. In 2012 he was shortlisted for an OffWestEnd Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright for Bottleneck. Steven Atkinson is Artistic Director of HighTide Festival Theatre and has directed at: 59E59, New York; Bush Theatre; Southbank Centre; Nuffield Theatre, Southampton; Soho Theatre; Pleasance Edinburgh; Underbelly, Edinburgh; Assembly Rooms Edinburgh; Latitude Festival; Watford Palace Theatre; Trafalgar Studios. Steven won a Fringe First as the director of Lidless in 2010.

BOTTLENECK

Dates: TODAY 30 July - Sunday 26 August 2014

Venue 300: Topside, Underbelly, Bristo Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9AL

Start and end times: 13.30 - 14.30 (60mins)

BOX OFFICE: 0844 545 82 52 / www.underbellyedinburgh.co.uk