It's September 2011. I've had a break and am now looking into the future and wondering if it is possible to perform three different plays on separate nights within a week. Actually, I am already learning that caution is required.
The first performance of the season was last Saturday. "Family Matters" in Bulkington. Last time I went there all my sound and lighting equipment was nicked from the back of the car during the show. I'm convinced it wasn't Bulkington's fault. Just a toerag passing through I'm sure. That's all water under the bridge now. Bulkington conjures other thoughts in my mind now... egg sandwiches. The organiser, Fiona and her mum score very highly indeed on the refreshments front and I stepped on stage feeling very well fed and content. The audience was a little small. I was competing with a Beer Festival and it seems that Bulkington prefers beer of a Saturday night. Nevertheless it was a nice night. I would just ask one small thing of the lady who beat me to the punch line a few times, though. Would you mind awfully waiting till I've said it too before you say it out loud?
Later in the week I reviewed a play at The Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. It was the first time I'd been to a play there, and my first review. The play looked interesting and I settled down to a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Then something extraordinary happened. One of the actors messed up a scene and then completely forgot his lines. I mean, completely. He didn't just wander around the stage waffling a bit until they came back to him in the magical way that lines sometimes do. He told us what had happened, left the stage and didn't return for about 20 minutes. Mystifying. This was an actor with a pedigree. He'd performed the same part for a whole run in 2010. What on earth had happened? I couldn't understand it.
I'm nowhere near in that actor's league but I'm usually pretty good on lines. Or, I thought I was ... until Dorridge the following week, last night in fact, when I performed "Ten Days ..." for the umpteenth time. I must have done sixty odd performances of this show over the years but suddenly, inexplicably, my brain was a gaping void. It was the same feeling as you get when you go upstairs and can't remember what you went for. Only this time there were 108 people in the audience. Luckily for me, my words came magically back as I wandered around the stage waffling. But now I know it. Noone's safe. Maybe this is a virus that I caught at The Belgrade. Whatever it is, I hope that one bout of it guarantees lifelong immunity. This weekend I'm performing "Double Booked" and I'll do without the gaping void, if that's OK.
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