Stunning the Punters (& Other Stories) is one man on a bare stage giving a bravura high-energy performance in three tales of imagination run wild: Master of Café Society by Steven Berkoff; Stunning the Punters by Robert Sproat and Dillon’s own adaptation of The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
“George Dillon is one of the most uncompromisingly compelling performers I have seen. He has the vocal precision of a Gielgud, the physical presence and skill of Marceau, and a heart, mind, and attack that are all his own.”
THE GUARDIAN
An out-of-work actor’s frustrations explode over breakfast, an ex-skinhead recalls an exuberant racist graffiti spree with a ghostly twist and a would-be suicide sees a lost paradise and returns with a message of hope for our uncaring world….
“Stunning the Punters is a compelling piece of theatre: make haste to catch it!”
THE TIMES
George Dillon first staged, Stunning the Punters (& Other Stories), directed by Laurence Boswell, at the Nightingale Theatre in Brighton on his birthday, 27th July 1990. The triple bill won rave reviews from the leading national newspapers and a nomination for the Independent Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe and in London that year, and went on to tour the UK in 1991 and 1997.
“It meant paying, but three days after going to see Stunning the Punters I went to see it again. This is one-man theatre at its most intelligent and most powerful. Don’t wait to be told about it, or to read another critical paean – go and see for yourself.”
WHAT’S ON IN LONDON
George kept Dostoevsky’s The Dream of a Ridiculous Man in his repertoire, occasionally performing the piece in a double bill with Berkoff’s Hell until 2012. George returned to Edinburgh with Stunning the Punters (& Other Stories) in 2016, and this time was completely ignored by the press!
“Dillon is an astonishing technician, better equipped than most actors in the land, who commands dramatic effects as if he were Marcel Marceau wired into a Wurlitzer.
SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY
This is the craft of acting carried to a pinnacle of virtuosity.”