"Karinthy is one of those playful artists," a friend wrote. "His playfulness consists of smashing up his toys to see what is inside them." He played like an adolescent boy: he was concerned with Unknowable Life, the grotesque situations of everyday life, the absurdities of middle-class existence - a curious mixture of humour and tragedy.Karinthy Frigyes was a Hungarian writer and humorist who proposed the now famous hypothesis of six degrees of separation. He developed a benign brain tumour and wrote a book ‘A Journey Round my Skull’ to document his experience of the illness and the operation. He jokingly referred to himself as a failed ‘tumorist’, and died a year later of a stroke whilst tying his shoelace. It is this book, an extraordinary piece of medical testimony from a patient’s - and an artist’s - point of view, that inspires the material for the show.
In this feisty and bizarre female double act, two forgotten clown-like characters retell the epic story of Karinthy’s life, death and works and battle it out on the sides of art and science, to see who will become the most successful in the eyes of the audience, whilst the loser will discover the true meaning of failure.
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