Partridge’s Stratagem

Stratagem with Alan Partridge for Playhouse

The Edinburgh Playhouse is the only non-arena venue planned for Steve Coogan’s 14-venue tour of Stratagem with Alan Partridge Live, which will arrive in town on Thursday May 27, 2022 for one night only.

Tickets are on general sale from 10am on Saturday (book here). Tickets are already on sale for the date at the Glasgow SSE Hydro (book here) the night before and for Aberdeen P&J Live the night after (book here).

Coogan started out in comedy as a voice-artist for Spitting Image. He came to prominence when he won the Perrier Award (as it was then) in 1992, performing as Partridge with John Thomson as politically correct stand-up Bernard Righton, beating Jo Brand, Bruce Morton, John Shuttleworth and Mark Thomas.

Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge

In 2020, while live performance was on hold, Coogan appeared in one of the Traverse’s Shedinburgh interviews, telling Gary McNair: “I’ve won a bunch of BAFTAs and all the rest of it over the years, but the most exciting thing I ever won in my life was the Perrier Award.”

Coogan recently brought the character back for a second series of This Time with Alan Partridge on BBC One and

Stratagem, which is being “devised, written, produced, choreographed, performed and funded by Alan Partridge” according to its publicity material, will see the inept TV presenter, “not just treading the boards but pounding them” as he sets off from Belfast in April and arrives at the London O2 at the end of May.

According to a promotional video for the show, Partridge says that Stratagem seeks to bind the country together after Covid and Brexit.

“I want to build a bridge”

The United Kingdom, Patridge pontificates, is “warm beer and cold hands. It is the clacking of bowling balls, a peel of church bells, a clap for a nurse, a help for a hero, the jingle jangle of two morris dancers shaking hands – Or it used to be.”

The United Kingdom is a “nighted” Kingdom – or is that Knighted, it’s hard to tell. It is a “scissored isle with Brexit and Covid leaving us less united than ever,” he says. “But whether you are a pro-European who has had the jab or a Brexiteer who doesn’t believe in vaccines, I want to build a bridge.”

Partridge’s solution is to unite the country behind something that everyone can’t stand – like speed bumps or anything changing. This, he says, is his stratagem for the future, his “plan to restore daylight to a nation plunged into darkness”.

Tickets for most dates go on sale from 9am on Saturday 29 May 2021, through Ticketmaster. Tickets for the Playhouse dates go on public sale from 10am on Saturday 29 May 2021, through the Playhouse website here.

Listing

Stratagem with Alan Patridge Live
Glasgow SSE Hydro, Exhibition Way, Stobcross Rd, Glasgow G3 8YW
Wednesday 25 May 2022. Evening: 8pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.

Edinburgh Playhouse, 18 – 22 Greenside Place, EH1 3AA
Thursday 26 May 2022. Evening: 8pm.
Tickets from 10am Sat 29 May: Book here.

Aberdeen P&J Live, East Burn Road, Aberdeen, AB21 9FX
Friday 27 May 2022: Evening: 8pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.

ENDS

Tags: Alan Partridge, Comedy, News, Playhouse, Production News, Steve Coogan, Stratagem with Alan Partridge Live