John Lennon’s nonsense poetry is to be performed in a show at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in August. Baldynoggin Productions will be performing In His Own Write in its entirety for the first time by three actors during this year’s Fringe Festival, from 8-30 August.

Lennon’s book, influenced by Lewis Carroll, Spike Milligan and The Goons, and gobbledygook comedian Stanley Unwin, was published by Jonathan Cape in 1964 at the height of The Beatles’ fame. It was greeted at the time by the Times Literary Supplement with these words: “Worth the attention of anyone who fears for the impoverishment of the English language and the British imagination.” According to Ray Coleman’s biography Lennon, a Tory MP in Parliament insisted that the book highlighted the poor education in Liverpool, and that Lennon was illiterate. Lennon followed it up with a second, similar book, A Spaniard In the Works, a year later.

The show, which has been aproved by Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, will run at the Voodoo Rooms (venue 68) every evening at 5.10pm. It is part of the PBH Free Fringe at Edinburgh, which means that tickets are free and available on a first come first served basis before each performance.

The man behind the show, director Jonathan Glew, said: "I have been enchanted by this book since I first stumbled across it some 18 years ago.  I fell in love with its wit, inventiveness and play and for many years thought it would translate beautifully to the stage.  It is a book I have found myself returning to time and time again and last year decided to try and secure the rights to mount a production.

“I wrote to Yoko’s entertainment lawyers in New York and asked for the rights to present ‘In His Own Write’ in its purest form - page by page and in its entirety. My aim is to celebrate, unpick (some of the pieces contained within are a little challenging) and ultimately share this beautiful, zany and sophisticated piece with as large and diverse an audience as possible. 

“I was keen to establish that my motives in mounting the show were not about making money off the back of the John Lennon legacy and so being part of the PBH Free Fringe seemed the ideal partner for the work. Each show is absolutely free and a collection bucket will be used at the end of each performance for people to make donations / pay what they can. I liked this idea instantly - it seemed to me to be in keeping with John’s spirit of peace and inclusivity whilst on a practical level meant that if we pitch the show just right and can capture the imaginations of our audience then there might be a chance we can break even.”