We're not usually free on a Tuesday, and it's only thanks to a cancellation by Lisburn that we have a chance to go to the Lyric in Belfast to see "Uncle Vanya". Fi knows the DSM there and we planned this a week ago, and by extraordinary coincidence we also ran into a couple in Dan Lowrey's on our last night in Cork whose daughter Orla is in the show.
It's a cracking show and a fabulous ensemble. The set's been pared down to a minimum, with none of the furniture and associated set dressing that normally accompany Chekhov. Afterwards, in the bar, Orla joins us for a drink and we discover that this paring down happened during the previews, and since a number of lines refer to the furniture, they had to be cut last-minute, too.
On shows like "Equus", where the set is non-naturalistic and the props minimal, when we come off stage that's pretty much job done for us. This isn't always the case. When "Ab's Party" opened we used to spend well over an hour packing up the bottles, glasses and other set dressing ready for loading into the van, because it just wasn't feasible for the stage managers to do it as well as the very intricate set. As the weeks wear on, though, the propping becomes so efficient that you can usually halve the time spent on it. By the time I joined the "Beauty Queen" cast I ended up staying out of the way and just did costumes, they were such a well-drilled unit.
There are limits to what a cast ought to attempt during a get-out, though. The "Vertigo" touring floor was constucted from huge sheets of plywood and massive scaff bars, and you can imagine the damage to life, limb, property and street furniture that used to result from dizzy actors wandering about with such things.
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