Mike Hudson’s play Beautiful Losers is back at the Silo in Auckland, and at BATS in Wellington. Hudson’s partner Margaret-Mary Hollins directs the story of beat writers Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady leaving New York for Mexico, “accompanied by a soundtrack of cool jazz, conversation, amphetamines and booze.”

The play scored rave reviews during its initial showing, with the Sunday Star Times calling it “Very polished and very funny”. Lead actors Ian Hughes (Shortland Street, Bare) and Scott Wills (Stickmen) are returning for the second run.

You can catch Beautiful Losers in Auckland from 3 to 20 December 2003 (bookings 09 300 3700), or in Wellington from 16 to 27 March 2004 (bookings 04 802 4175).

Worth noting:

Everyone knows Jack Kerouac, but fewer know Neal Cassady. He was Kerouac’s partner in the series of cross-country adventures that would later become On The Road. Cassady gave Kerouac the idea to write the book in a rush of mad ecstasy, without self-consciousness or mental hesitation.

In the 1960's, as Kerouac withdrew into alcoholism and early middle age. Cassady began an entirely new series of road adventures, this time with young novelist Ken Kesey. When Kesey organized a trip to the New York World Fair in a psychedelic bus named Furthur, Neal Cassady was the madman behind the wheel. This trip is chronicled in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.