Past Shows & Double Acts
Mullarkey & Myers
With a shared love of cartoons, B-movies and bad TV, Neil and Mike Myers performed a series of sketches playing inhabitants of a midwest town threatened by aliens, coal miners, Mounties with 24 hours leave in London and all the exhibits on our own home-made fairground ghost train/haunted house.
They even made their own super-8 movie, for which they ‘dubbed live’ all the sound and dialogue. Mullarkey & Myers toured all round the UK, ending up with a sell-out season at the Edinburgh Festival before Mike returned to Toronto, where they revived the show a few years later.
Much later Neil appeared in two of Mike’s Austin Powers movies – International Man of Mystery and Goldmember.
The Timid Twins
Neil teamed up with Tony Hawks, two little boys who were… timid… on Paul Merton’s BBC Radio 4 ‘Big Fun Show’. Basically Neil just said “Hello I’m Timmy Timid” a lot while Tony (Timid) tried to take humorous looks at things like Gardening, Girls and Shopping.
Hancock & Mullarkey
Nick Hancock and Neil did a double-act in flared trousers and kipper ties, acting out their favourite 1970s TV Themes (Alias Smith & Jones, Ironside, Kojak, Black Beauty, Animal Magic, Hawaii-5-0, Tales of the Unexpected, Dad’s Army and many others) and also announcing their political movement – the ‘Go With Noakes’ campaign, celebrating their hero – John Noakes of Blue Peter.
One Word Improv
With Neil gracing the stage with Eddie Izzard, Stephen Frost and Suki Webster, their influential One Word Improv show toured throughout England, Scotland and Ireland, before embarking on dates in Paris and Amsterdam culminating in with a sell-out run at the Albery Theatre in the West End.
Taking just one word at a time from the audience and improvising scenes lasting ten minutes or ten seconds, nothing was planned in advance and was entirely unscripted.
What resulted was pure fun, especially in the West End where the group regularly managed to smash up the furniture on stage.
Then Again
Based at the Lyric, Hammersmith, ‘Then Again’ was a revue featuring Neil, Dawn French, Sheila Hancock and Des Barrit, and featuring superb sketches by Stephen Fry, Harold Pinter, N.F. Simpson and the cast.
Charley’s Aunt
In 2001 Neil toured England with an all-star production of Charley’s Aunt; featuring Eric Sykes, Christopher Biggins, Dillie Keane, Bruce Montagne, Nyree Dawn Porter and Francis Matthews.
“It is Neil Mullarkey who steals this production as Lord Fancourt Babberley and ‘Charley’s Aunt’. His impersonation to replace a late arriving aunt in a desperate attempt to provide the necessary chaperone for the two students to entertain two young girls, is masterful.Once he is dressed in the Victorian equivalent of a withdrawing room, he plays the role for all it is worth with a great deal of skill but also a casualness of style that has the audience eating out of his hand.” The Slough Observer
“Another big bonus is that in casting Neil Mullarkey as Lord Fancourt Babberley – he who dons frock and petticoats as the eponymous Charley’s Aunt – this production has a comedy actor with a sense of humour to match the text, a wonderfully malleable face and, not least, an enviable sense of timing.”Eastern Daily Press
All That Mullarkey
Throughout 2000 and culminating in Spring 2001 with a West End run at the Soho Theatre, Neil performed his acclaimed one man show ‘All That Mullarkey’; chronicling the illustrious and spurious history of the Mullarkey ancestry, and its extraordinary impact on the world. Neil portrays, amongst others, the Mullarkey who wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays (even the difficult ones), the Mullarkey who split the atom and the Mullarkey who invented contemporary dance.
For years people have assumed he made up his surname, but it is first recorded in 1615. In 1890 there were only twenty-one bearers of the name in the whole of Ireland, all of whom lived in Connacht. But Neil’s great-grandfather had already left for England…
“Neil Mullarkey had me pissing myself. I’m not sure how Mullarkey does it, but he deftly weaves his own personal magic to blur the boundary between fact and fantasy as well as that between audience and performer” The Stage
“Quite simply one of the funniest shows I have ever seen” Essex Courier
“An absolute triumph; rampant absurdism, bizarre scholasticism, a genius performance, fascinating and completely original. Shades of James Joyce and William Burroughs. Astonishing dancing!” Tony Slattery
“Brilliant. Strong characters. I loved the Frenchman. The moments of madness were fantastic.” Josie Lawrence
“The best bits were the true bits. I loved the re-enactment of the meeting with another Mullarkey. The dancing stuff was great.” Tony Hawks
“Assured, funny and skilful.” Robert Bathurst (‘Cold Feet’)
“Thank you for being a catalyst for a mini family reunion. We genuinely thought the show was very funny.” Ciaran Hinds