I am intoxicated with power. Over the past few weeks I have made swingeing cuts to the cast list of Family Matters. "Hold on" I hear you say. "I thought it was a one woman show. How does that work, then?" You are right, of course. It is a one-woman show. But I am supported by a cast of a thousand props each of which is under constant scrutiny. Two strikes and you're out is the rule and I regret to report that there have been casualties.
First - the condom. The whole point of a condom is that it is supposed to make things safe. It has no other raison d'etre. The condom in Family Matters has behaved with such blatant and irresponsible care for the safety of the show it simply had to go. It had a small role. Maybe that was the problem. Condoms are brought into this world knowing that they are the last frontier. So maybe being given a minor role was demeaning and the condom decided to make more of its onstage presence. (Rather like the Nativity play innkeeper who, to Joseph's plea for a room for his travail and heavy laden wife replied "Yes, plenty of rooms, old chap. Come on in!") All the condom had to do in Family Matters was be produced from my pocket, be dangled in front of the audience until they laughed and then disappear into the side of the cutlery basket until it could be disposed of later on. All of that it did. However, when I came to lay the table I discovered that the condom had stuck itself to a knife. One hand held the basket, the other hand held the knife. Accordingly, vigorous shaking was the only way of detaching the condom. Vigorous shaking is not the normal style of laying a table. The condom did come off the knife e-ventually, but from then on it was on its final warning. The following night the condom fell out of my pocket as I walked onstage. So, for twenty minutes, I performed the show with this "thing" on the floor near to me. I ignored it. But, then I felt something squidgy under my shoe .. and I knew that my next scripted movement was to lift my foot so that the audience could see the sole. What I didn't know was what the squidgy thing was .. and I couldn't look down to verify the whereabouts of the condom because where my eyes go, the audience's tend to follow. I lifted my foot and prayed that the jonny wasn't attached. It wasn't. It was still lying on the floor. But there has to be trust between the performer and her props and the trust had gone. And so has the condom.
...followed by the fairy lights. Stupid of me, I know, to use Christmas fairy lights in a play. I can't actually think of any domestic piece of kit with a reputation for greater unreliability. People make jokes about them over the advent sherry. But the trouble is that the fairy lights usually get a laugh in Family Matters, so they have been worth persevering with, even though every - single - time we have used them, they have let us down. We turn them on and nothing happens. We jiggle the wires. Still nothing. We pull out every bulb. Nothing. Change the plug. Zilch. We ask around. "Has anyone got a set of fairy lights we can borrow?" Someone says she thinks she might have some in the loft. Twenty minutes she returns covered in cobwebs, with her Xmas decoration box. But in the meanwhile my original set has sprung into twinkly life, so we say "Don't worry. We're fine now." Last night, the fairy lights just died. They got all hot, went phut and expired. But I can't really do without them, because the laugh is worth keeping. So tomorrow I'm going into town to buy some more. That'll be easy. It's mid April.
