The Life of Reilly

There is one man on the stage. His name is Charles Nelson Reilly. He is telling his own life. What he tells has been shaped into a stage piece. He wrote the text with Paul Linke. Reilly was born in the South Bronx in 1931. The family later moved to Connecticut. Hard things happened in that household. They took him for the odd one in the house. At thirteen he escaped a circus fire by a hair. After that day he found it difficult to sit in an enclosed hall. That is a strange contradiction, because he spent his life on stage. The telling sets comedy and pain side by side. The film was assembled from the last two performances of the show. Footage and music are cut in between. Charles Nelson Reilly is the only person on stage in the eighty four minute documentary, an American production Barry Poltermann and Frank L. Anderson finished in 2006.