Brighton Fringe

Review of 10 Questions on Gscene
http://www.gscene.com/arts/index.shtml

Firings

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.      

Priors Marston

You may not know this, but I have a thing about Colin Firth.  It started when the television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was broadcast a few years ago.  No, actually, it wasn't the swimming in the lake scene that got me going.  It was the look that passed between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett as she played the piano in the drawing room one evening after dinner. A long, lingering look of tentative love.  I paused the programme and took a photograph.  It seemed the most natural thing to do, but everyone laughs when I tell them.

Last night I performed to an audience in a Warwickshire drawing room.  To my regret Colin Firth was not in the audience, not that I was expecting him to be there.  Anyway, he is mentioned in the script which, I reckon, is about as close to my screen idol as I'm ever going to get. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my parlour performance and noted the difference between that and the village hall venues I often visit.   

First there is the green room.  In village halls these vary considerably from kitchen cupboards, hallways, council chambers, toddler group rooms, schoolrooms, staffrooms to ladies loos.  I have learned not to be fussy.  Or I had until last night, when I was afforded a suite:  double bed, magazines, full length mirror,  bath, unguents, wet room, the works.

Then there's the theatre space itself.  You tend to know what you're going to get in a village hall.  Mostly they are the same:  empty spaces that work for birthdays, discos, brownies, yoga, slimmers world meetings and my show.  Last night I was in a  grand and comfortable converted barn with books, soft furnishings and a perfectly sized and fitted stage for a show about family life. 

I could get to like this.. and everyone has a stage in their home, don't they? 

But you have to be careful when performing in someone's home.  Things can happen:  the phone or doorbell can ring.  The cat can wander in.  The dog can bark.  Or, as last night, the dog can come in.  

We are enjoined never to perform with children or animals, and I wasn't planning to.  But during the first scene I heard the padding of paws on the stairs leading to the room and knew that for a moment or two I wasn't the main attraction.  I had no idea at all what was going to happen next.  I knew I could trust the owners to do all in their power to remove the dog, but I didn't know the dog that well. How obedient was she?  How interested in what was happening on stage?  Would the cocoa pops (a prop) prove an irresistible lure?  Auto-pilot kicked in as all these thoughts flooded my mind.  Happily the dog was as well-trained as I could have hoped and I regained my audience's attention as she returned to lie in front of the Aga. 

I'll do it again though ... a parlour performance. And I quite like the excitement of the unexpected .. disconcerting though it can be.  The last time I did it a hen came in through the window.  Not such a well trained hen, either.  But that's another story.




 

Alrewas and Bulkington

I don't think I've mentioned this yet.  In January I became a new columnist for Warwickshire Life Magazine.  I have just submitted a piece for publication later this year.  One paragraph states boldly: "I am not normally superstitious."  Well, scrub that because now I am. 

My trip to Weston on Trent this time last week was joyous.  Ditto my visit to Alrewas on Friday.  These two audiences have set the bar so high in terms of appreciation, I feel that I am doomed to disappointment henceforth.

The day after Weston on Trent my car suffered a blow out on the M40.  Bit of a pain, but noone got hurt and I considered myself lucky that it hadn't happened en route to Weston.  With a carful of sound and lighting equipment, props and costumes, it would have been a pain to unload all of that beside the road and then change a wheel in the dark.  Impossible actually. Lucky me that it happened the next day.

Alrewas was a dream night.  I love the place and everyone in it.  Such was my joy as I left that with a carefree gesture I threw my hatstand into the boot and it snapped in half.  Once again I counted myself lucky that this hadn't just before the show. The hatstand is a crucial prop.  I'd have been in trouble if it had broken just before a performance.

The following day I set off to Bulkington, rather uneasy in the knowledge that incidences of bad luck often happen in threes.  As I left the house my handmirror fell out of my bag and smashed on the floor.  This was a nuisance in itself.  So, phew, the three things had happened.   Bit of a pain to have to go and get another mirror.  Bit worrying that a broken mirror often portends seven years' bad luck.  But, I reasoned to myself, there's not much else that can go wrong now.  Noone can actually sabotage the show itself because that's in my head.  As long as I'm not decapitated, it'll be OK.  

So Toby (young techie) and I arrived in Bulkington and were delighted to discover that the venue had its own inbuilt sound and lighting system. Things were definitely starting to go my way.  This saved us the bother of having to lug our own PA system and lights inside and spend a couple of hours setting them up.  We'd be able to leave my equipment in the car and drink tea and eat biscuits instead. 

I did the show.  It went fine and then I idled a while away in conversation with two lovely members of the audience, knowing that there wasn't a long get-out (a technical term for getting out).  Eventually I got out to the car.  Odd thing.  It was unlocked.  I never leave the car unlocked - especially when there's a thousand quid's worth of sound and lighting equipment in there waiting to be taken home.  Only that was it - there wasn't -  a thousand quid's worth of equipment in the car any more.  Some vile and loathsome person had broken into the car and nicked it during the show.  Oh hateful, mean and dishonest creature!  You have upset me.  You won't be reading this, I know, but if you were I would want you to know that I thoroughly dislike you.   But, ha ha, I can have a bit of a laugh because you didn't take the actual lights - too heavy for you were they?  Quite what you are going to do with everything you need in order to make lights work (cables, dimmers, faders, connectors etc etc) but no lights, I don't know.  Not really my problem is it?  I'm after you though.  I know you're right handed because you took my right glove (little hands a bit cold, were they?) and I know you'd been in the mud (all over the car).  It's only a matter of time.  Keep looking over your shoulder.   

But I do feel a little jinxed now.  Within the course of one week the car, a prop, a mirror and now all my technical equipment have been sabotaged by bad luck.  The script is the only thing that hasn't yet been targetted because that is in my head. I wish it were somewhere less important.  Either a beheading or total memory loss is surely imminent. 

Weston on Trent

Nice to be back on the road after a couple of months off.  Nice to catch up with senior techie Dik again… there is nothing more comforting when pervaded by an unmistakeable smell of burning than being supported by a veteran technician with 38 year’s experience behind him who knows, even without looking, that it is nothing to do with us.

Food is an important aspect of touring.  My own one concession to superstitious practices is to ensure that I eat and drink exactly the same thing before each performance: two ham and mustard rolls and a pepsi max – leaving room for handfuls of chocolate balls (Mars, Nestles or Cadbury’s it doesn’t matter which) in the dark, so I can’t see how many I’m eating, during the drive home.  Sometimes I succumb to a biscuit or cake if offered one at the venue.  They vary in levels of interest and appeal.  Pink wafers have never been my favourites, and variety packs leave me cold.  Home made is unfailingly good.   The puddings in Bishops Itchington were to die for, I recall.    But  last night the bar was set higher than ever before thanks to someone in Weston on Trent.    At the kitchen servery was laid out a promising array of tins and foil wrapped home made cakes and biscuits.   Any one of them would have done the job but the courgette and lime cake was too intriguing to resist.  Dik’s resistence failed him first and he took a tentative nibble  “You can taste the courgette.”  He announced, and then finished his piece in two mouthfuls.  I saved my own till later and then wished that Dik had left his.

I sometimes think that Ruth Rich, the heroine of my one-act plays, lives a more interesting albeit  troublesome life than my own.  Not today though. 

I awoke to discover that I had received 15 emails.  That’s more than usual.  They revealed that my email account had been hacked into and that, unwittingly I had sent  a link to a Canadian Viagra site to all my addressees.  These include staff and pupils of both children’s schools, a large number of business contacts, the ladies and gentlemen of the choir I sing with and several eminent members of the judiciary – many of whom had concluded that this was a bona fide new venture of mine and sent witty emails to tell me so.  That’s not counting the one from the person who took it personally and seemed pretty pissed off.

It took a bit of time to set this straight and so I left late with my mother to visit my niece.    Half way down the M40 a tyre blew.  I was all for changing the wheel but mum said I mustn’t  because it was dangerous so instead for 45 minutes we stood shivering to death (also dangerous in my view) beside the road singing hymns we both knew until an overly kind breakdown man confirmed that I clearly look older than I feel by wrapping me in a tinfoil blanket while he put everything right, and departed with the news that I’d probably need two new tyres not one because the rear one was bald.  

Then the phone rang and it was someone in my village telling me that they had found my filofax lying in the road and I could pick it up whenever I liked.  How the hell did it get there? 

Got to niece – with just enough time to spare for a quick lunch followed by an hour of new child seat for car assembly.  No finger nails left, and precious little temper.

Got home to discover the hoover in pieces all over the sitting room floor and Gina the cleaner looking fraught.  Then spent the evening trying to upload a new anti-virus system and deleting copious old and doubtless invaluable files from the computer.

Will shortly go to bed – content in at least one respect:  Sometimes, very occasionally, my own true life is even more stressful than that of my alter ego. Eat your heart out, Ruth Rich, and leave the courgette and lime cake for me.   

Pleasance, Waterfall and Waingroves

I was rather excited about performing in London.  It has buzz and cudos and I was very proud in my anticipation of stepping onto a London stage.  Also, I feel amongst friends at The Pleasance.  They looked after me very well in Edinburgh and I was happy to be renewing our acquaintance.    In terms of preparation I felt I had done rather well.  However, it was only on the morning of the show that I read that the theatre space was at the top of two external and two internal flights of stairs.  The Double Booked props comprise most of the internal furniture of a small family saloon car, together with the contents of an average-sized kitchen.  All I could do as I sweated my way up and down those stairs with table, chairs, bookshelves and car seats was laugh.  The show was fun and the audience was appreciative - if small.   Lots of forces were keeping people away:  half term, Hallowe'en, the clocks going back, and of course, X Factor and Strictly.  For a London debut, this was rather quiet ... but a precious memory nonetheless.

So, on to Waterfall (where there isn't one), where, to start with, it was even quieter.  Parked atop a Staffordshire moorland outside the converted Victorian school building which was to be my venue I did wonder where the evening's audience could possibly appear from.  There didn't appear to be any houses close by .. or even people.  A couple of dog walkers bent their heads into the wind and hurried past. They were the only evidence of humanity on top of the moorland for about twenty minutes as Toby and I waited for the key.  But .. two hours later the building was full of people out to have a good time.  Fuller even than the organisers had expected and they had to keep coming in to the dressing room to fetch more chairs.  Community is everything in places such as this.  The hall was warm and friendly and boasted a brand new kitchen, which I was shown with pride. 

The next day we went to Waingroves.  This is a very different place - semi urban in feel, the community centre and surrounding buildings gave the impression of having been (still being in fact)  at the centre of a hard working community.  I don't know, I'd have to check, but I bet there was once a mine nearby.   I was shown the brand new kitchen.  This being the third brand new kitchen I had been shown in the past four venues I tried not to be blase.  In fact, I think it's absolutely fantastic that these meeting places are so well supported that they need and can provide bigger  better facilities for the men, women and children of the neighbourhood who want to gather there.   

Live theatre is all about tales of the unexpected.  In Waterfall the fairy lights played their usual trick on not coming on.  So I put in a line "... and the lights didn't work - as usual."  And then they came on, which made me feel stupid.   In Waingroves the malteser packet exploded and I watched a malteser roll off the table onto the floor.  So .. I picked it up, didn't know what to do with it next, and ate it.  And there was a laugh and a ripple of applause.  Toby the techie says I should do it every time, but really, I'm not that keen to build eating off the floor into the show.  Not even for the sake of an easy laugh.  Or am I?    I must do something about the ending of the show though ... gives me something to work on, which will be fun.  

So, that's it for 2010.  No more performances till January 2011.  But a mountain to climb with another script to learn...    If you read this, do let me know.   Otherwise it's a bit like shouting into the wind.

Old Meeting Yard, Bedworth

I fear I am in danger of becoming boring on the subject of how I continue to be overwhelmed by the strength of community spirit in English rural neighbourhoods.

This week I performed in Bedworth, a town in north Warwickshire which developed in the  coal mining era of the late 19^th and 20^th centuries.  Communities thrived around their meeting places in those days and the town boasts the Old Meeting Yard, a huge Victorian building which high ceilings, thick walls and an acoustic to die for.     Often community centres of such age and scale are too big for modern uses and it struck me as a building which could so easily have become a dinosaur, but Bedworth has spirit and that spirit has not only kept the building alive, but provided the need and, more to the point, money for its facilities to be improved and updated.  And so a brand new kitchen and toilet facilities have been built.  Accordingly, it was felt that the appropriate entertainment for the night was my play “Ten Days … that shook the Kitchen!” and an audience of nearly 70 gathered to sit at long tables to watch the show and then enjoy supper cooked in the  new kitchen.

Standing in the wings minutes before curtain up there was a noise to my left and a latecomer walked in from the cold and told me he’d convinced himself that the play started half an hour later than advertised.  As this was happening, Linda the organiser was introducing me.  As she finished her introduction, he walked towards the door through which I was about to make my entrance.    The audience burst into a welcoming round of applause, and he entered – never to be late again, I fancy.

After the show a lady came up to me and accused me of stalking her.  This could have been awkward.   Stalkers and actors have been known to go together .. but isn’t it the actor who is supposed to be the one who is stalked, I wondered?  The lady explained that there were at least five coincidences between the storyline of the play and her life: school life, the ages of her children being the same as that of the children in the play, their weekly activities being identical, the African snails her children brought home from school – one of which bore the same name as one of the children in the play.  By this time even I was beginning to feel spooked.  Reassured though  because Ten Days .. that shook the Kitchen! is now three years old.  I know we’re not talking longevity on the scale of The Mousetrap, but nevertheless it was comforting to be told that the play is as relevant today as it was when I first wrote it.