To kick off our Screwball Summer in style, members are invited to our season launch event on Sunday 24 May. Join us in The Atrium Bar where to mark the occasion, "Screw(ball)driver" cocktails will be added to our bar menu, and you can enjoy a swell playlist of our favourite big band tunes from the height of Hollywood's Golden Age, whilst hobnobbing with chums & fellow members alike.
To spice things up, we're overjoyed to welcome back drag artiste extraordinaire Medusa Has Been, who returns to The Garden Cinema with an all new 40s repertoire. Bedecked in vintage glamour, this chanteuse, danceuse and occasional pranceuse, will stamp their tiny feet and vocal stylings all over your heart.
A season launch wouldn't be complete without a marvellous feature in the form of Ball of Fire, which will be introduced by the season's curator Erifili Missiou, who will provide some context about the selection of films on offer this summer.
Tickets are restricted to 2 per member, so you can bring a good time gal or pal along. They're £14.50 each, and include the drag performance as well as an allocated seat for the screening of Ball of Fire. Screw(ball)driver cocktails will be available to purchase separately on the day.
Event timings:
15:00-16:00 Cocktails & big band tunes in the Atrium Bar
16:00-16:20 Performance by Medusa Has Been
16:20-16:30 Introduction by season curator Erifili Missiou
16:30-18:30 Screening of Ball of Fire
About Medusa Has Been:
Medusa Has Been is the newest oldest showgirl in town, starting their Oldboylesque Cabaret career at 60 and ageing disgracefully into a creature of the night, a creature of delight, of fright, might, even fancy flight! Nostalgic, classy and a little bit sassy, Medusa Has Been is the Werther's Original of drag - a vintage sweetie!
About the film:
Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper make sparks in this snappy screwball take on the Snow White tale. She’s a burlesque queen with a colourful vocabulary who needs to lay low for a while as the police close in on her gangster boyfriend (Dana Andrews). He’s a nerdy grammarian compiling an encyclopaedia along with seven other professors who happens to need an expert in slang. As she spices up his language—and steals his heart in the process—the stage is set for a brains vs. brawn showdown with the mob. The lively direction of Howard Hawks, fizzy script by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and comic chemistry between Stanwyck and Cooper come together to produce one of the most sensational comedies of the forties.