Home Calls when Abroad

Doesn't checking your email on holiday just feel wrong? Our hotel in Venice had a free internet point so it seemed churlish not to have a look at what had come in, but it felt like being briefly transported back to the UK. Most odd.
I'm glad I looked, though, as Andy had sent through details of a casting with Vienna's English Theatre for Charley's Aunt. This is notable for two reasons - I've been seen by them before and I gave my worst audition to date (and that is up against some stiff competition); and I am being seen for the character of Sir Francis Chesney. I've done this show before, ten years ago, and I played Jack Chesney then - Francis' son (see posts passim)
This is a sort of memento mori, I suppose - I have an album on facebook called "Getting Older in Public" which I sometimes add to, which shows me getting more and more decrepit as the years bite. What next? Falstaff? Prospero? Lear? I should be so lucky!
Here it is: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=17546&l=bb3d6&id=617048310

Gathering

And so the season closes with a barnstorming Sat mat and slightly less assured evening show. I very nearly deliver my last line pronouncing "horrible as "hoggible" but control my wayward mouth at the last instant. Which made me think how unmemorable some last lines might have been if the actor hadn't been concentrating, viz: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a suitable friendship" etc.
On the drive back I slip into murmuring my lines and find them comfortable friends now - something I never felt actually during the shows. The same goes for much of the other fundamentals of acting when applied to rep; it's rare that you get to concentrate on the drama as much as you'd like to amid all the prop/costume/blocking worries which never fully evaporate, and that's a terrific shame.

If I've learned anything over the last month, it's this: that rep will expose, cruelly and immediately, any guilty secrets you have as an actor. Whether it's a problem learning lines, fear of long speeches or holding the stage, remembering blocking, a confidence issue or a problem with focus, it will all be thrown into VERY sharp relief with absolutely no chance of resolution in the immediate present (and sadly, that is when you need it most). And that's scary.

Arrivederci Wolver

The goodbyes have started, even though we have two shows still to do. Su, our director, left on Wednesday (although she may visit this evening) and there were many fond cheerios at the friends evening on Tuesday, where CV himself made a short speech (after addressing the crowd at the show, too).

Of course, in all this, we are trying to decipher whether the rep will be returning next year, and if so, in what form. This season is about half the length of past ones, which is a disturbing factor. But the audiences, reception and general bonhomie seem to indicate that the theatre would be greatly the poorer without it. The girls are having lunch with the Friends Chairman, as I write, so perhaps they'll try to pump him for information over their dim sum and fried rice. Marcus and I aren't invited, of course. We don't get asked for autographs at stage door that often, either. It's a gender thing.


The endless, and unwelcome task is clearing my dressing room. I have a small mountain of Thomas the Tank Engine toys which I've bought for Jake, plus a fridgeful of milk and other things that I can't leave behind but can't take. Then I have to decide what bizarre gift I can leave for the next actor. The Russian Ice Stars Andrei C and Andrei B left me a drawerful of Alka-Seltzer. Bless.



In the fridge I have a plain bottle full of decanted Martini Extra Dry which was a "Dangerous Obsession" prop. It looks rather like a night-soil. Perhaps I'll leave that...

(sic)

I guess every town is famous for something - Bill Bryson talks about small towns in America which are famous for doing great grits (We're REAL proud of our grits, man! YEAH!). Don't know what Wolverhampton is famous for, but it leads the world in bad spelling on signs. Bejesus, it does. Here are some of my favourites:

There's a sort of classical beauty to some of it, and a breathtaking irony too. See this one on the right:

As a piece of postmodern criticism, it's genius. As advertising, it's an absolute catastrophe

And here's another corker. Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps there's something wrong with their oven and this is the only way of describing it accurately. In any case, the guy sitting at the table behind got his comb out imediately after I snapped this...

But here, on the right, is the jewel in the crown. God knows how many local government mandarins and pencil-pushers this got past before it was sent to the signmakers. At least it's pointing towards the right street for the Learning Quarter.

Tempus Fugit

Nearly a week since our Saturday stagger-through, and last night (Thursday) was the first time I think any of us have felt anything approaching comfortable on stage. Me especially. A casting director friend of mine said once that it's impossible to do too much work for an audition and I think this definitely applies to performance. In weekly rep, if a performance is completed it seems almost to be in spite of the (limited) preparation rather than thanks to it. Plus "Gaslight" is a properly written play, with nuances and shades of meaning and characterisation, and a multi-faceted set of themes and relationships which is in direct opposition to the rather two-dimensional dramas which have preceeded it.I can't help but think it deserves better than we can give it in the time.
That's not to say that the reception hasn't been warm - it has. Emily's husband Terry said that the sense of ownership and fondness in the audience was palpable last night, and you can certainly feel that on stage.
It occurs to me, suddenly, that I'm totally unprepared for this finishing tomorrow, so obsessed have I (and we) been with getting through it at all. Perhaps this is why people come back - after all, the relationships deserve so much more than you can offer, and next year you get another chance. Maybe.

Lines

I've dried both nights this week so far, so much so that I had to be rescued by Emily, and I hardly slept last night for sheer worry about doing it again. I couldn't stand the house this morning - I couldn't slip on the mask of ease today, so instead I've come into town to escape to my dressing room. It's the only place I can really be alone at the moment.

It feels a bit like the downward spiral of depression, this problem with lines. Self-perpetuating. I remember reading that someone - Ian Holm? David Suchet? - was so crippled with stage fright from line anxiety that he gave up theatre altogether in his late 20's and has only just returned in his 60's. Nice if you can choose whether to be a movie star or not...

Mortals have to make do wioth whatever advice or solutions present themselves, and I'm not inclined to share the situation with the rest of the cast (don't want to freak them out or throw them off) so I'm trying something I'd normally scoff at - positive thinking and visualisation.

I've done this at auditions before - notably for "Pera Palas" and it seems to work, and I have no fear of pacing the streets chanting and stuff. Well, can't hurt...

Too Darn Hot

God, it must be the hottest day of the year. We ate lunch (pie and mash for me - well, when in Rome...) by the canal, where we were also coincidentally right next to the ring road and the railway line and it still contrived to be really gorgeous. Inbetween a run of "Gaslight" and our matinee of MWOC, this was. We're pretty done in, all told.
The slightly stop-start run proved that the new show is in pretty amazing shape for three day's rehearsal, but the clothes are going to be a nightmare. Shirt, waistcoat, jacket, overcoat, scarf, gloves and hat - in this temperature. Crazy. But not as crazy as a toga in the Courtyard Theatre for some loony Roman drama a few years ago - that was in February and during our changes we weren't short of hat-pegs backstage, let me tell you.
This is madness. My head feels like a pressure-cooker.

Managing Stress

I posted a couple of days ago about first-night stress - a phenomenon which is only surpassed, in my experience, by agent-night stress. Andy from VSA came up last night to see Paul and myself in MWOC. It's the first time he's seen me in anything since he took me on, and the first time he's seen Paul for some while, so the atmosphere was a little, ummm, heavy, not helped by the muggy weather.
Needn't have worried, though - the loose-lippedness of the opening night (picked up by the Birmingham Post review, unfortunately) has now entirely dissolved, and we've settled into quite a comfortable routine, Paul and myself especially. There are times, still, when I scan the lines ahead of certain scenes (II.2 especially) and just wonder how on earth we're going to get through it, and indeed there are times on stage when it seems endless, but ultimately it's extremely satisfying, if a little chilling, to have to hold the stage and drive the play for so long. Next week is much more of an ensemble piece - Bella is a big part, but most of the truly enormous monologues are mine. These are still a bit of a problem, but the plot is so good that driving it becomes a pleasure, not a chore.

Noticed at Last!

The Wolverhampton Express and Star give us a good review for MWOC! I am singled out as being "suitably irritating", which, along with "gives it tolerable substance" and "does as much as he can with awful dialogue and a plot line that goes nowhere", I can add to my suitcaseful of useless epithets. Huzzah!

Jewel in the Crown

We've just staggered through "Gaslight" (first run after blocking and working) with some pretty impressive results - Emily (Bella) and Marcus (Jack) have a great on-stage relationship already - they did some work on this prior to the season so perhaps that accounts for some of it, but it's in excellent shape for such an early stage. Bella is a mammoth part, but Em's well on top of it.

I find the material very affecting - my character (Rough) basically rescues Bella from the clutches of her wicked husband, and the scenes where he reveals the horrible truth about the husband's identity to her are difficult to play, such is the emotional strength of the writing. Indeed, at times I could see Emily's eyes well up, and I found myself stumbling, lump-throated, over my lines. That has very rarely happened to me - although I'm a hopeless romantic fool and find it impossible to watch the end of "To Kill a Mockingbird" without weeping helplessly - but on stage I rarely feel the emotional charge of music or film. I knew a bit about Patrick Hamilton's fiction before, but I never realised what a fine playwright he is until now. What a joy to finish with this.

"Acting? Wouldn't Tax an Embryo!"

Muggles quite often say to me "God, it must be hard doing what you do" - to which I usually say something jokey about it being nothing compared to working the coal face or lumberjacking or whatever. I mean, showing up an hour before the curtain goes up and floating about saying lines and doing moves you've done dozens of times before isn't taxing is it? But weekly rep, whoa! That's a whole different ball game.
"Murder without Crime" opened yesterday and I have never felt so unprepared for a first night. It was certainly fresh; there was nothing stale about the sheer panic when the next line/move/scene totally eluded you until literally the millisecond before you did it. And occasionally the millisecond after you should have done it. Thank God my costume has brown trousers.
And this morning we began blocking "Gaslight" only stopping at lunch to do the MWOC matinee, followed by the evening show tonight, then more rehearsals all day tomorrow before the show. And we have to be off book for Act 1. No pressure!

Richmond Road Revisited

The Abigail's Party set after some reprogramming with chainsaws and sledgehammers. RIP.

I've just got off the blower to Captain Cabot, who's finished casting his autumn show, Humble Boy (see posts passim) and is off on holiday soon before rehearsals begin. Can't help feeling a twinge of envy about all this - some shows are literally a line on your CV afterwards, but some are much more, and the ripples they cause in your life are felt for much longer. One of the reviewers towards the end of the second tour of AP said "...poor old Steve Dineen has been Laurence since September" as though it was some terrible burden to inhabit a character and be part of a company for that long, but I honestly never thought that for an instant.
Incidentally, it turns out that Emily (picture below) almost saw AP in King's Lynn at the end of the autumn tour, but as it was a sell-out she may not even have been able to get in. And I remember that Amy (New Ange) very nearly saw it in Aberdare, her home town, where it definitely wasn't a sell out. As is the case so often, a catalogue of near-misses and almost-saws.

Stop Press!

For the first time this week the gun has worked properly!

Dead Letter Perfect

I've always been the sort of actor who hates being on book - I used to put the script down as soon as possible, usually long before I was word-perfect. This was not a popular approach with some directors; even less so with writers (but they're at the bottom of the food chain so who cares?). So I've been learning lines accurately in advance of rehearsals for a few years now. But every now and then a script comes along which defies all your attempts to get it off pat. And Murder without Crime is one of those.

God knows how many hours I've spent on this. I remember opening some champagne when I finally finished looking at it pre-season, it was that much of an ordeal. And with a few days to go, it's still an absolute monster. At rehearsals Tony, our DSM (who follows on the book), shakes his head like a Parkinson's patient during my speeches, which is a bit of a worry.

I wish I was like Emily, who is not only spot-on with her lines but seems to be able to articulate the full stops properly. She's onstage at the moment wearing nothing but a small bikini, which has caused a bit of a stir among the Grand faithful. Here's a picture of her and me in "The Murder Game" where I am doing my generic look of concern from The Art of Coarse Acting.

Aunt Julia and the Sceneshifter

One of the undoubted joys of rep is the chance to ASM for the show which you haven't been cast in. After the highs of last week's starring roles in "The Murder Game", Julia (ingenue parts and general young crumpet casting) and I (miserable old character actor and borderline homosexual casting) are on ASM duty this week for "Dangerous Obsession".

Our duties are not onerous. In Act 1 we have to smash a pane of glass offstage. In Act 2 we have to walk around the back of the set in time with some recorded footsteps and rattle the french windows at the back of the set. The rest of the time we put our feet up, nibble some bitter chocolate and perhaps read from a slim volume of poetry. Well, I do. Julia has a fag outside.

Julia and self as June and Brian in The Murder Game. Can you tell that's a wig? Her, not me.