Worthing: Week 8

Worthing: Week 8

Home:

Having been away from home for three weeks it was great to get back on the Saturday night/Sunday morning. Although by the time me, George and Ernie had navigated the M1 roadworks, (very badly signposted) diversions and took daylight savings into account, it was 5:45am when I got in. Just time for a bit of the Hollyoaks Omnibus (Yes, yes. I know. For some weird, mysterious reason I don't get many channels on my TV in my lounge, no one knows why - I get loads on the one in the bedroom) and then to fall asleep. But it didn't really matter how late it was because I was home for the week! Worthing is only about a 45-50 minute drive from Eastbourne so I would be commuting. It also meant that I had a houseguest for the week. GMoss was staying and so we would share the drive wherever possible. I've played both the Connaught (where we were) and The Pavilion theatres in Worthing a fair few times and as most of the crew work across both venues I know them quite well. But I was most put out to discover that not only had Nelly, their sound guy, left to concentrate more on his band (which is doing pretty well, so he's forgiven) but that Jim, who had been technical manager there and before that was on the crew, had retired! (Secretly I was also a bit glad as the last time I was there I broke Jim's mug and hadn't seen him since…..) Despite it seeming strange without them, it was good to see that Martin, chief electrician, was still there. We also had another Martin as our duty stage manager for the week, so it got a bit confusing at times as we were all on cans together…..

Worthing didn't just mean home for me. It also meant home for a lot of the cast, who would be commuting from London for the week. It is also the hometown of our producers, Jon and Anne-Marie and so meant that we would be seeing more of them as well. And we had a visit from Rachel Wagstaff on opening night.

Worthing auditorium

One of Worthing's royal boxes

Simon in his dressing room

Smaller:

I've spoken in past blogs about the space we've had in certain theatres and you may have seen the video of the backstage area at Birmingham Rep. We'd been a bit spoilt for space in the last couple of venues and so it was a bit of a shock for the company to find just how tight it was going to be in Worthing. There was very little space in the stage left wing, so little in fact that the backing for the big swing door was almost touching the wall, leaving just a small gap for the cast to squeeze through. Luckily there was an extra door leading from the dressing room corridor to downstage left, by me. It did mean that there wasn't much space to put the furniture in the stage left wing and so all the desks etc had to be completely cleared into the corridor. The cast were absolutely fantastic, all chipping in to help each other. For example, at the end of the first dug-out scene, Carolin opens the down left door for George to exit and for her and Selma to enter and strike some furniture, whilst more of the cast enter from stage right. This week, George came off and instead of going straight to the back of the set to get ready for the tunnel scene as he normally would, he went and held the door to the corridor open so the dug-out desks could be brought swiftly through. 

You can see the end of the raise entrance and how close it was to the back wall

The upstage arch was also close to the back wall

The gap between the stage left door backing and the wall

Bit blurry, but this is in taken in the stage left doorway
looking back to my prompt corner and the door leading to
the dressing rooms….. Tight!

There were a few other small changes to where furniture came on and off. There was absolutely no room to store the garden bench in the stage left wing and so Simon had to bring it on from stage right one instead. This may sound a simple enough change, but remember that there's a lot of other traffic going on at the same time, so even a change as seemingly small as this takes a bit of thinking. The biggest furniture change was probably that the bed had to come on and off through the upstage arch rather than the downstage one. There was no way to navigate the angles downstage and so it had to come on from the narrower arch. This meant that Sam and Jonny and Simon and Peter had to be careful not to knock the masking which runs along the upstage side of the arch, if they did it would mean that the whole of the upstage right wing area would be exposed to the audience (this did happen one night and we did glimpse a few cast members, but luckily no one was in the middle of a quick change at the time and GMoss and Martin managed to get it  back in place fairly quickly. 

The space restrictions also meant that we weren't able to fly two of our practical lights. We have three in the show. A bare bulb for the first bar scene, a really cool sort of coolie shaped hospital light and a fabric shade for the second bar scene. As the hospital light spends the most time on stage and sets up the hospital really well, it was decided that that should be the one we kept. 

But, our company are real troopers and despite the space restrictions the show continued pretty much as normal and soon all the little changes had gelled really well. One major bonus of the theatre is that it is also used as a cinema and so I was able to tie some of our front of house sound into the cinema surround system. This meant that the machine guns and explosions at the end of Act One sounded AMAZING out front. We were also selling quite a few tickets (Worthing can be a difficult one for shows to sell in, due to demographic, audience age and, of course, weather!) and getting a really good response from our audiences even with a few standing ovations!

Bad Bromance?

I think I am in love with all the boys on this tour. They are all so different, but at the same time they are, without exception, complete gentlemen. I know, I know. We're not supposed to care about that rubbish in this modern world of feminism, blah, blah, blah….. But, I don't care. I like it when people behave well and have nice manners and our boys do and they have. (The girls are marvellous as well and I'm sure wouldn't mind me saying that they are, without exception, completely bonkers. Me included.) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. I love the boys. But, I particularly love how much Jonny is enjoying and embracing the touring lifestyle. He likes staying in proper Mrs Miggins' pie shop digs as he loves meeting new people and so every week he shoots off with his sic' (young persons word for… I'm not sure… brilliant, maybe?) orange suitcase to another new home. He's mainly been sharing a dressing room with Alastair and they have developed a bit of a bromance since Eastbourne, but over the last few weeks he has also been spending a lot of time with George and a new bromance has developed (don't get jealous Al….). Now, I am telling you this for two reasons. One, because I promised you gossip (I should probably emphasise here, for anyone not fluent with reality TV show speak, that a bromance is a completely platonic but very close relationship between two chaps) and the second is that only a few people actually stayed in Worthing itself and so to tell you about the social side of things I have to tell you about George and Jonny's 'man-pad' for the week. 

Jonny enjoying George's homemade carbonara
in their bachelor pad

George getting some well deserved carbs

Jonny and George had found a studio flat with (in their words) two mattresses in the lounge and also another sofa bed type thing. I was a bit concerned when they said 'studio' that it was going to be a bit of a squash, but as it turned out they had plenty of room. And what a bachelor time they had. From nights out in Worthing and trips to Brighton's pubs and clubs (followed by cooking chicken at 5:10am) to spontaneous basketball games with random groups of Eastern Europeans who they met in the town and skimming stones on the tide, they certainly made the most of their 'boy time'.

Jonny and George out on the town and posing with Justin
Timbermistake

This reminded George of one of Lisette's lines
from the play

Early train home after a night in Brighton

Cooking chicken at 5:10 AM

Alastair joined them on a couple of occasions - most memorably the weird lime curry thing that the three of them decided to go to AFTER the night out in Brighton as a hangover cure….. Yeah. Lime. And curry. And a hangover. Nice.

But they had a grand old time regardless.

Owwww. It hurts to think……….

And Carolin and Alastair win the award for bravery this week as they are the first two to venture into the sea. In April! Although I must say that I think Carolin is slightly braver as she went in in a swimming costume whilst Alastair sensibly stuck with a wetsuit. Sinead, who also stayed in Worthing  was even more sensible and stuck to swimming at the shinny modern swim centre.

Carolin and Alastair are the bravest company members

Meanwhile at home:

So, what did everyone else get up to in back at home, or outside of Worthing? I'll give you a quick run down:

• Myself and GMoss watched a fair few films including 'Enders Game' (which has nothing to do with Eastenders, as I discovered, but had Harrison Ford still looking quite fit in), Hunger Games: Catching Fire (I hadn't seen the first one so a quick trawl through wikipedia was needed) and Avengers Assemble (which had nothing to do with that film with Rupert Everett in a bowler hat with an umbrella, but now means that I HAVE to buy every single Iron Man film and watch repeatedly…). I went to the chiropractor and paid a lot of bills. Not all at the chiropractor…..
• Peter got the bill for his flood (not sure if I mentioned it but he was flooded when we were still in rehearsals) and took a while to recover from reading it.
• James did some lighting and has just informed me that he did re-wiring as well, which I think means that he should do the get-ins and outs…..
• Malcolm, down the road in Brighton, was being training mentor and fund-raising for the Brighton Marathon.
• Simon was at home with, as Alastair calls her, Mrs Bear most of the week and with friends for a couple of nights.
• Lucy was having some much needed boyfriend time.
• Sam was hunting for a car. An on-going search which, I fear, may never end.
• Lizzie and Selma were staying with friends in Brighton - who had to go and do normal jobs at 9am every morning……

In other news:

There was great excitement mid-week when the 'Birdsong Bus' was spotted around Worthing. Now, don't worry, we haven't taken to travelling in a tour bus yet (I'm pretty sure we could give any metal band a run for their money in the chaos stakes if we did…). A brilliant bit of marketing has seen our poster make its way onto the buses and Alastair was very chuffed that his face was help transport the people of West-Sussex about.

It's the Birdsong Bus!

On Saturday it was the Grand National and naturally we had to have a bit of a flutter amongst ourselves. Simon and Alastair cut up all the runners put them into a hat, then we each paid £2 to pick two. After the race, whoever had the winner would get the pot. The grand winner was Jonny. A couple of us also had separate flutters as well and I got a couple of quid backing Tony McCoy each way (although not as much as lost backing a few others).

Sweepstakes in a German helmet

After the matinee it was time for one last visit to the fantastic 'Beach House' cafe/bistro on Worthing seafront - you really MUST go if you're ever in the town. It was a great find by Alastair. They do a fantastic range of fresh fish, salad dishes and specials in addition to the usual cafe foods. They even kindly re-opened the kitchen early for us on matinee and understudy rehearsal days so we could eat in time to get back to the theatre.

Selma, Bear and Lucy at The Beach House

Bear food

Sinead, Carolin, Alastair and Jonny in The Beach House

And then it was over. Goodbye Worthing. Only one more week until a week off. We were moving on to Mold, in North Wales and by the end of the next week most of us will have been together solidly for 12 weeks (Peter and I were together on panto so that's even longer for us!) and have become great friends, but a week off will be most welcome by then. Mold will also see us doing our first full understudy run, where all the cast were coming in to help and some of them would be taking on completely different roles for the afternoon. I'll be typing that particular blog up on the week off - possibly in a pub or outside a cafe somewhere (although still not drinking…. 16 days out of 45 gone so far!) so keep your eye out for that. It's going to be a good one. 

Till then, then.