LoCo's Festival of Transformations has body-swap magic at Wilton’s Music Hall from 8-12 August

LoCo Festival of Transformations

This year’s London Comedy Film Festival has found an eminently suitable venue for its Festival of TransformationsWilton’s Music Hall, a place of wonder tucked away in a corner of the East End and the world’s oldest surviving Grand Music Hall.

LoCo is showing five body-swap movies this week – and pairing them with a series of live-acts before each film.

Tonight (Monday 8th August) Tom Hanks' classic age-reversal comedy Big will be preceded by performances from contortionist Rubber Richie & juggler/magician Matt Hennem; ventriloquist Nina Conti accompanies All of Me, starring Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin (Tuesday 9th); burlesque artist Audacity Chutzpah appears alongside Dustin Hoffman in drag in Tootsie (Wednesday 10th); theatre and visual arts collective Effigy Actorum consort with John Cusack in Being John Malkovich (Thursday 11th); and indie rockers Pete & the Pirates will perform before Friday’s screening of Michael J Fox’s horror spoof Teen Wolf.

Each evening starts at 7pm and there will be DJs playing in the bar until 11pm. During the day, LoCo's School Of Slapstick will be running an interactive silent-comedy workshop to find the heirs to Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel and the other screen stars whose careers began on the stages of London’s music halls.

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Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.