‘The Great Bruxo Burvis’

Behind the curtain

 

Like the very best ‘Dramady’/Sitcom - including Extras, Peep Show, The Office, This Country, Curb your Enthusiasm and more - Bruxo focusses on the ineptitude of the individual and resulting humour from an acute lack of self awareness and characters with multiple flaws. Add in regular poor choices and the continuation of standing by them when things are going terribly wrong, these uncomfortable cringe-worthy moments, when handled well, often lead to comedy gold.

 

Mervyn Potts, AKA Bruxo Burvis, at face value, is a chancer. A fake clairvoyant who uses his skills to hoodwink the vulnerable. Aided onstage by his long suffering wife, Anna-Lee, an ex glamour model. He promised her Vegas and gave her the glittering lights of Great Yarmouth.

 

Clearly out of his league, Bruxo spends his days wracked with paranoia that she will soon leave.  As a result of this insecurity he forgives her many infilidelites, virtually self hypnotising to block them out. 

 

As a failed stage hypnotist, and general entertainer, Bruxo’s final platform is Entertainment Manager at Sunny Sands holiday park in Lowestoft.  Governed by ex 'Coronation Street' actor, Bruce Jones, who shares the same disillusion to his career trajectory and spends his days telling anyone who will listen of his tribulations as ‘Les Battersby off Corrie’.

 

There is a sadness and childlike charm to Bruxo. He genuinely believes he is offering peace to those in need. With his mother on her death bed, Mervyn Potts invented the ‘Great Bruxo Burvis’, his clairvoyant alter ego, to being her peace as began her final journey to the other side. This act of love became a village rumour, then a whisper, to a house call or two… and then a stage debut, where he met the love of his life and then, like things often do, the lie became the reality. 

 

We enter Bruxo’s world on the day of a road trip performance to Aldeburgh for ‘an evening with the Great Bruxo Burvis’. Merv’s not exactly in the mood and, tired of the mundanity of his life, he offends a mysterious gypsy necromancer, who takes offence at his lack of spiritual tact.

 

Freshly ‘cursed’ with a rather temperamental window to the other side, after succumbing to the terror of his newfound abilities, Bruxo takes his new found skills on the road and blows away the opposition at a local psychic night, firmly re-establishing himself as the next big thing. Following this rare night of adulation, Bruxo realises there’s worse things in life than crippling depression and marital cuckoldry, and the gift of a gypsy curse may just turn out to be his greatest ever gift. 

 

With the chance to rebuild his life, career and confidence, the resurrection of the great Bruxo Burvis begins! Mervyn takes one more stab at stardom, and the chance to finally regain the respect of his one true love.