list.co.uk/festival Kubrick3 | FESTIVAL THEATRE
F FOR FAKE
Miles Fielder fi nds that truth proves stranger than fi ction in the astonishing tale of a London travel agent who pretended to be legendary fi lm director Stanley Kubrick
S urely the most astounding – and hilarious – true story to be dramatised at the Fringe this year will be Kubrick3. The PIT theatre company production, written and directed by David Byrne (not that one), tells the story of a conman who passed himself off as the famous director of the i lms 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining.
During the early 1990s, north London travel agent Alan Conway successfully impersonated Stanley Kubrick. Initially ‘conning’ his way into a sold-out theatre show, Conway subsequently inveigled himself into the coni dence of a string of individuals, including several big names in showbiz, and ran up some hefty debts. Conway looked nothing like Kubrick, but the i lmmaker shunned celebrity while the conman preyed on the public’s deference towards it, allowing him to get away with a scam that would be impossible today. Byrne admits that researching the story was tricky − he had to make decisions about which of several versions of Conway’s account he should believe. In the end, he brought that confusion to the stage itself, creating four different simultaneous Conways who bicker and contradict each other to get their individual views across. Kubrick3 is not the i rst time Conway’s story has been told in Edinburgh. In 2006, the Edinburgh International Film Festival premiered Colour Me Kubrick, in which John Malkovich gives a priceless performance as Conway. The i lm was written by Anthony Frewin, a long-time assistant to the real Stanley Kubrick who was working with the i lmmaker throughout the ‘Conway affair’.
Frewin remembers how he and Kubrick became aware of Conway: ‘We started getting phone calls from Warner Brothers, who relayed messages to Stanley, saying, “A friend of Stanley’s phoned.” Stanley didn’t recognise any of these people, so eventually I spoke to one of them. He said he had met Stanley in a pub in Kensington Road – can you imagine that? So it became clear that someone was impersonating Stanley.’ What did Kubrick think of Conway impersonating him? ‘Stanley thought it was rather annoying – particularly when it came to light that Conway had only seen a bit of one of his i lms, Barry Lyndon, and didn’t like it – but he didn’t see what he could do about it. We sought legal advice, but were advised that it would be difi cult to get any of Conway’s victims to humiliate themselves in public by testifying in court. So we decided on exposing him and see if that would put an end to him.’
Frewin, who had been putting together a dossier on Conway, passed it to a Fleet Street newspaper journalist friend and a story subsequently appeared in Vanity Fair . . . To say more about the ‘Conway affair’ would spoil the plot of this remarkable stranger-than-i ction true story. You can i nd out how it ends in Kubrick3, or in Colour Me Kubrick, which gets a special screening at Edinburgh’s Filmhouse on 12 August to coincide with the play’s world premiere production.
Kubrick³, Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, 3–26 Aug (not 13), 7.10pm, £10.50−£12.50 (£9.50−£11.50). Previews 31 Jul–2 Aug, £6.
1–8 Aug 2013 THE LIST FESTIVAL 81