Mold: Week 9

Mold: Week 9

Where be that to then?

It's actually in North Wales, not too far from Llandudno where we celebrated our 100th show last year, and very close to Chester. We were playing Clwyd Theatr Cymru, which is both a receiving house and a producing house and much, much bigger than where we had been the week before!

Summer is here:

Now, I do owe you an apology. I did say that I was going to write the blog for Mold last week on our week off, but to be honest, I was much too busy having a nice time. It does mean, however, that I'm not boring you this week with a blog entitled 'What I did on my school holidays'…… Instead I am bringing you another exciting insight to the life of a touring company. Also, I bring the news that…. Summer is here!!!!! It began about halfway through our week in Wales and has seemed to continue into Bury St Edmunds, which is where I am writing this. Summer would not be summer, though, without a final downpour. This hit as I was driving to Mold on the Monday morning, but I was quite happily pottering along the M23 when…… My windscreen wiper snapped. This has happened before (the linkage breaks underneath the bonnet and so the drivers side wiper just stops and you can't keep the other side going as it just catches the other one and then the both snap, blah blah blah) and it is probably one of the most terrifying things that can happen when driving on the motorway in pouring rain. But, because it's now the third time this has happened, I do have an emergency stash of cable ties and so after a brief (and damp) stop I managed to get everything working again and continued on my way. I have to say that at this point I didn't hold out high hopes for the week. I thought the wiper was something of an omen….

Not so much 'Damian,' more 'Delightful':

How wrong I was. I LOVE Theatre Clwyd. It's set just outside of Mold high up on the hills and has beautiful views of the surrounding countryside. The venue itself is not just a theatre, it's also a cinema and three art galleries. We were in the 'Anthony Hopkins Theatre', but there is also the smaller 'Emlyn Williams Theatre' and the studio. Wales' primary producing theatre, it plays host to about 900 public performances a year in addition to touring throughout the UK.
It was nice to have so much space back in the wings. It not only makes the show itself easier, but also means the the get-ins and outs are usually quicker and smoother as there is space to put things out of the way. In smaller venues you usually end up having to navigate your way around bits of set, furniture and technical equipment whilst packing up or getting things out. The crew there are all fantastic and worked really hard to get everything ready for the show. Nick and Chris were our duty stage manager and lighting technician for the week and they both had lovely deep film star voices which were lovely to listen to during the show! We had a several different front of house managers during the week but they were all really friendly and cheerful and one lady in particular caught the eye of the boys.

View from the dressing room windows

 Clwyd is one of those venues that pretty much has everything you could possibly want. It even has a catered Green Room, which is something you don't find in most theatres these days. Pretty much every theatre has a Green Room of sorts and they vary greatly in quality and comfort. Quite often, in a smaller venues there isn't much room and so it could just be a small dressing room with a fridge and a kettle. Worthing, for example, is very short on space and so there is a Green Room 'area' at the top of the stairs with a mini-fridge and a kettle. When we were in at The Gaiety, in Dublin, last year, their Green Room (which is actually kitted out in dark green, beautiful leather!) has a serviced bar (only open after the show, of course!) which is available to all theatre staff and incoming companies. Both the National Theatre and Plymouth Theatre Royal have catered Green Rooms, meaning that there is someone there cooking hot and cold food which you can buy for a pretty reasonable rate, but Mold is the only other place I have found which also does this. For a few quid, Carol and her staff will make a selection of food and she definitely does requests. This meant that we were pretty well sorted before matinees and in between shows. Sam's girlfriend has worked at Theatre Clwyd and so Sam could also remember a few good pubs and bars for post-show drinks and The Glasfryn, which was just down the road, became our local.

Theatre Clwyd Green Room

It even has a TV!!!

So my wiper was not an omen. No. But I wasn't the only one to experience car trouble on the way up. Think back to my Durham blog. Do you remember the little adventure Alastair and George had with Omm 4? Well, Omm 4 returned at the end of the York week. Having forked out a fair bit of money (more than £500 but less than 1K) to get it back on the road (and MOTed) Alastair sent me the following message at 3:43pm on Monday afternoon:

'Omm 4 broken down on M5……..'

Oh dear. Poor Omm 4 and poor Alastair. You'll be relived to know that he did make it in time for the show!


Back to Mrs Miggins:

Ah. Digs. Digs. Digs. I haven't really bored you with tales of digs for a few weeks, so it's about time you had a few stories.
The only downside of the theatre in Mold is that, due to its out of town position, there aren't that many digs close to the venue itself. Malcolm was the closest, in what has been named by other companies as 'The Hobbit House', because it looks like the sort of place you might find Bilbo Baggins. Some of the boys were in a beautiful self-contained house a bit of a drive away, Simon was having 'Bear time' and staying on his own for the week and Roger, GMoss and I were about three miles away in a beautiful spot right on top of a hill. Roger had a little cottage about halfway down the drive and GMoss and I were in the main house which had an outdoor alarm which set of a cuckoo noise if anyone crossed the cattle grid (yes, you read that correctly and it is as bizarre as it sounds).

G Moss and I were up a hill out on the moors…..

Up a long drive. Roger was round the bend (not physically or mentally, I mean his
cottage was round there….)

Boys playing a game in their digs. You know the one…..

He wishes

No, I can't make it out either.

Boy time

As for the rest of the girls…. Well…..
Now, Selma and Lizzie had made a bit of a 'boo boo' when booking the digs they were to be sharing with Sinead. When they booked them, they thought that they were a 40 minute walk to the theatre - which is not too bad, not ideal, but do-able. None of them have cars you see. On closer inspection (arrival), they realised that the beautiful lodges they had booked were actually a 2 HOUR and 40 minute walk….. 'That's ok,' they thought. The taxi to the lodges was only £9 from the train station. The train station being in Wrexham, though, not Mold. Sinead got a cab into the theatre on the Monday morning and was charged £30…… However, they were alright in the end as knight in shining armour, Sir George, rode to their rescue as he had a car that week and so drove them home most days and they did managed to find a taxi company that did the journey for half the price Sinead paid on the first day, which meant that it was cheaper coming in to work. They did have to spend one night on the boys sofas though, as they got stranded at 2am and couldn't get a taxi…..

'Ladies and Gentlemen, due to illness the parts of …….. will be played by…….':

That's right, it was time for our understudy run. Now, originally we wanted to do this in Worthing, but as you know from reading my Worthing blog (quick, go back and read it now if you haven't!) we'd had to change a few entrances and exits and scene changes that week due to space issues. We soon realised that it would probably be the worst place to do an understudy run as everything was so different. We decided that Mold would be better as everything would be back to normal.
Do you remember who's understudying who? I told you a few weeks ago, so go back and check if you've forgotten, or if you haven't read that particular blog yet (I can't remember exactly which one it was…). All of the company came in to help and so we had a few cast members playing completely different parts to normal. Alastair would be giving his Stephen Wraysford as that is his biggest understudy role and so George very kindly offered to do (and learn!) the part of Evans as Sam was playing Tipper in Act I and Shaw in Act II. Simon was playing both Berard and Shaw in Act I (complete with some speedy costume changes) and just Berard in Act II, giving Sam a chance to do both of his understudy parts. Likewise, Lucy was playing Lisette in Act I, but as Lisette has less to do in Act II, she would then change to play Jeanne and Lizzie would cover the Lisette parts in Act II. Selma would, of course, just be doing Isabelle and James did Adams and Barclay as well as two Shaw scene changes which would be covered by Alastair in the event that Simon had to play Shaw and Berard in a live performance (seriously, are you following this? It is incredibly confusing, I know). Unsurprisingly, it took two people to cover Lucy's normal roles of Marguerite and her German and British soldiers as she does a lot of the scene changes as well as the the bits she does backstage, so it was decided that Carolin would play Marguerite on stage as well as the soldiers, but GMoss would do all the scene changes and backstage bits. This also meant that Roger would cover GMoss' usual backstage cues and do the setting and striking of the tunnel pieces. Basically, almost everyone was doing something new. Even I was kept on my toes as we were using a violin back-up file which Dom, our sound designer, had created in Birmingham. On this we have some of Sam's violin pieces recorded as well as some other bits and pieces that would change in the event of Sam being off. However, if he did play Tipper, he would still play some of the violin bits (but he wouldn't if he played Shaw), so there were a few quick edits to do as we went along and I had to concentrate.
Malcolm and Peter had the slightly easier jobs as they were playing their usual characters, but even then they still had to be alert as we were running as we would in a performance, meaning that there would be no prompts if anyone dried (forgot their lines) and everyone would have to help each other out.
Everyone had specially printed out sheets that I had been compiling over the last couple of weeks where everyone's movements and who they were playing were mapped (it had really made my head hurt doing that as so much goes on) and all the cast had written down exactly where and how they change into what costume as it would be a mammoth job if Sinead had to do that for the whole cast!
Only the official understudies wore costumes to save Sinead from having to get every costume clean again for the evening show and Lucy definitely got the prize for best hair as she looked lovely with her Lisette ringlets, Sinead did a great job there.
So, we were off. Everyone did a fantastic job and the run went really, really well. There were a few highlights which I shall now share with you:

• Carolin losing her cue sheet for Marguerite within the first 2 minutes of the show and only finding it at the end, meaning that there was a wonderful moment in the confrontation scene (where Azaire finds out about Stephen and Isabelle's relationship) where she ran on as a soldier and got ready to go over the top…..
• GMoss playing Turnwright (and the spoons) in the first bar scene…...
• Simon drying on one of his lines as Shaw. Which is the part he does every single night on stage……
• Lizzie coming on too early as the nurse. Which is the part she does every single night on stage…….
• Alastair as Stephen proclaiming that 'My mother died before I was born, my father left when I was four….' (Think about it for a moment…)
• George not only learning the part of Evans, but also singing the whole of his song in Welsh. He also wore Sam's radio mic for this in order for the offstage hummers to hear and so it was amplified around the auditorium. Brave man.
• Selma running off as Isabelle crying and rushing so convincingly that she slid and then tripped over her red skirt which was too long for her, yet still managing to make it look completely dignified.
• Sinead, after this, doing the fastest hemming anyone has ever seen and managing to get the skirt pinned up to a better length just in time for Selma to re-enter. 
• Simon singing Berard's song in the terrace scene…... That is all. 
• Peter playing Alastair in going over the top scene, managing to look suitable terrified. 
• Looking up at the going over the top scene at the end of Act I and suddenly realizing with horror that our leading lady was standing at the top of the central ladder (which is the only one that has to be completely supported by the person at the bottom) with Peter at the bottom…..
• Alastair proving that not only does he know this years version of the script very well, but that he can also remember all of last years too. Which completely confused George. I kept having to turn to him and saying 'last year.' 
• Me having a bit of fun with the recorded cheers in the Barclay speech (the only point where there were no understudies on at all, I should add!) and managing to make Malcolm corpse! 
• Lucy forgetting to pull the stage left door out of the drawing room scene position, meaning that in that in the following scene we had a first world war dug-out with frilly curtains and gold door knobs…..

Although there were plenty of funny moments and we had fun doing the run, everyone took it very seriously too and it was a great success. Everyone worked really hard and as a reward I gave out 'understudy prizes' to everyone at the end. These were in the form of Easter Eggs, large ones for the understudies and George (for learning Evans) and smaller ones for everyone else. We then went out for a meal at The Glasfryn and when I came back I found that my lovely, lovely company had bought me a massive egg and left it on my prompt desk. I do love them.

Lovely Lucy as Lisette

Gorgeous Selma as Isabelle

The Terrace scene with Simon as Berard

Lucy and Jonny as Lisette and Gregoire

Carolin serving drinks as Marguerite

Selma and Alastair as Stephen and Isabelle in The Red Room

Peter getting ready to 'Go Over The Top' whilst Alastair as
Stephen counts down the seconds

Sam doing Tipper's death scene

Terrifying. Terrifying. Carolin up a ladder.

Jonny accepting his prize

Bear with his Lion Egg (closest I could get to a Bear…)

The next day we found a review of Alastair's performance…..
No. Not really. There was a darts board in the corridor (see what I mean
about a great venue) and someone was playing tricks……. I suspect GMoss

Leisure time:

So, apart from understudying, what else did we get up to in Mold? I'll start with me as I had a brilliant week getting out and about.

I had a bit of an explore of the Welsh countryside on the Tuesday when I met up with a friend for lunch. He had been recommended a marvellous little river pub called 'The Boat Inn' in Erbistock. It is one of those wonderful places that you don't come across all that often as it's pretty hidden away and unless you know it's there you might not find it. You drive over a mile down twisty little country lanes until you come to this tiny bit of land by the river with a beautiful church and this pub. The food was lovely and inside there is plenty of space to eat with roaring log fires in each room. On the ceiling of one room there were hundreds of cups hanging from hooks on the beams and outside there was a great 'Dos and don'ts' notice, clearly written by someone with a sense of humour. If you're ever in the Chester/North Wales area, then do try to get down for lunch or an evening meal. The postcode is LL13 0DL and your Sat Nav will take you straight to it.

The Boat Inn

The Church right next to it

It really is right on the river

Ceiling of cups

The Rules of The Boat Inn
No Naked People is a particular favourite

On Thursday night I went up to Blackpool for the night. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. I love Blackpool and I'm always telling people how great it is. Unfortunately, as was the case when we were there with Birdsong last year, when I'm there with a show it's usually the winter and so is pretty bleak and you nearly get blown off the seafront, so no one ever believes how glorious it is when the weather is good. I had a nice treat of a leisurely breakfast in bed and stayed until about 3pm on the Friday when it was time to head back to Mold. On the way back to my car I passed the cenotaph. I'd forgotten how striking and well maintained it is. The words inscribed on the wall behind it are particularly meaningful to me: 'Sing softly. Be Still. Cease'. These also have an added impact when you're doing a play like 'Birdsong'.

Glorious day in glorious Blackpool

View of the tower

Like being abroad

Blackpool Cenotaph

The words inscribed behind really affected me

James and Peter played host to an amazing chilli night and later on in the week, along with Alastair, went for a long walk up a very big hill. Lucy, George and Carolin also went for a long walk up another very big hill.

Chilli night

Peter and James walk up the hill whilst Alastair takes a photo
(No idea who that other bloke is)

Celebrations as they reach the top

WE ARE MEN. WE HAVE CLIMBED HILL.

George, Lucy and Carolin up another hill. Somewhere in North Wales.

Don't get too close

Carolin wonders if she can get a lift back down…..

You can see from the photos what amazing weather we were having.

Ok, ok. I know. I've completely overused 'amazing' and 'marvellous' in this blog, but the week in Mold is one of those weeks where you are reminded of why you love touring. Being at a great venue with great people, meeting people, having fun, working hard, catching-up with old friends and seeing a bit of the countryside. Before I started touring 8 years ago, my geography was rubbish. I even asked if you needed a passport to get into Scotland (and my family are Scots/Dutch, so that was pretty embarrassing). But since I've been touring, my knowledge of the UK has improved so much and I've seen so many beautiful places that I often wonder why we bother going abroad on holiday….. Oh yeah. The weather……

And speaking of holidays, we were all about to embark on one. George bought everyone a little extra Easter treat on the Saturday and then we were off, about to spend more than a day apart for the first time in 12 weeks………

See you in Bury St Edmunds!

Heres a picture of Jonny pretending to be The Walrus.
Just because.

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.

York: Week 7

York: Week 7

Rhubarb Crumble:

A strange heading, you say? Not to me or anyone familiar with Original Theatre's last offering at The Theatre Royal, York. Well, actually. It might be…. When we toured 'The Private Ear, The Public Eye' last autumn our final track was 'Concrete and Clay' by… Area 51? Something like that. Where I'm going with this (and I promise you that I am going somewhere with it) is that there was a line about 'feet begin to crumble', which Paul Bouchier, our CSM, changed to 'I want a rhubarb crumble'. Hilarious, I know. Anyway, I mention it because I had it in my head all day during the York fit up. I'd managed to get down to Devon on the Sunday to see my mum for a pre-Mother's Day, Mother's Day and had a really nice day out, but it did mean that I had to tackle the 5 hour drive to York (normally only 4 - bloody M5 road works. You have forsaken me…) very early on the Monday morning and I was in a singing mood having belted out a few numbers on the drive up. We were only in York in November so it felt like we hadn't been gone too long and it was great to see al the guys, particularly the wonderful QOS Nick who was my sound guy for the day, Zanna on lighting (who replaced Liam who moved to Birmingham Rep - remember from last week?) and one of my favourite stage door keepers, Brian. 

History Lesson:

I don't know it you've ever been to York, but it's an old Roman City (a bit like Exeter where I hail from), however, there is evidence that it dates back much further than that. See, this is where I am in danger of becoming a bit (more?) boring. I didn't always work in theatre. My degree is actually in Archaeology (from Exeter, over 10 years ago, so you can look forward to me regaling you with stories about my mad University days when we're there in May) - well, Russian and History first and then Archaeology…. As you can see, I am putting my University studies to good use… Actually, I did make up some labels for Russian vodka bottles for a farce in 2005 and wrote and taught an actor how to read the back of a Russian tin of tuna once. But I (as usual) digress. We're not talking about me, we're talking about York. So, although it may bore some of you I am going to tell you a bit about York (please feel free to skip to section four if you wish). 

York: Founded by the Roman 9th Legion in cAD 71, who came across it whilst on their way north from Lincoln and named it Eboracum, York was the site of government for the whole of the Roman Empire on two occasions (the governing city being wherever the Emperor was). Most famously it was residence for a time for Constantine The Great, who 'created Christmas' (in its current form - I'm sure you know about it originally being a pagan festival) - he was actually the first real 'Christian' emperor and responsible for the unification of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. Roman York thrived for a time, but by AD 400 as the the Romans fled Britain, it was all but abandoned. 

James and Simon in The Shambles

I'm going to try to keep this brief - I've gone on enough already and I haven't forgotten that this is a theatre blog not a history one! After what is known as the 'sub-Roman' period, York became known as Eoforwic in the Anglo-Saxon period and, along with London and Ipswich, was one of the main centres for commercial production in the country. Then the Vikings came in AD 866 on All Saints Day, took control of the city and it became known as Jorvik and was not, by all accounts, a particularly pleasant place to live. Imagine scenes similar to those we think of when picturing the cholera outbreak in London in the 19th Century. Squalid living conditions, waste in the streets, unhygienic food and water, it certainly would bear no resemblance to the beautiful city that we were in. I'm going to stop now. I've (badly) covered two of the most famous periods of York's history (and I do apologise to anyone who has a much better and deeper knowledge of its history than me - I know I've just sketched), but if you do want to learn a bit more about York and its history, please go to www.visityork.org.uk or www.historyofyork.org.uk (excellent site - thanks for confirming dates), or better yet, try to visit if you ever find yourself in the area. It's beautiful, the old walls still survive and you can take a historical walk around them (as did Sinead and Lucy and Alastair and Simon) seeing all the buildings that still stand. I went out in search of a well known stationary shop/newsagents/book store that isn't Woolworths (MISS IT!) and got promptly lost. I'm ok around the theatre location wise, but as soon as I set foot in The Shambles (York's rambling cobbled maze of lanes with a variety of shops inside leaning and creaking Medieval and Tudor buildings) I get completely lost. 

York's walls

Simon wondering if it's safe...

Cuckoo and Bear Scale York's Walls:

I don't think this needs any further explanation. Let's say that Bear's (Simon's) attempt was a little more successful than Cuckoo's (Alastair's):

Back in Theatreland:

Right. Welcome back if you've skipped straight to this section. We've taken a short trawl through bits of York's history and I'm trusting that those who didn't skip are still awake? 

So. The Theatre Royal is a beautiful building parts of the old walls are still visible backstage (our stage right props table was actually a sort of workbench in a alcove of the the old wall). York is another producing house, similar to Salisbury, and so the in-house team were busy working on their owns shows as well as ours. As usual Jude, their head of productions, was there to greet the whole company and give us a health and safety briefing, as well as letting us know how best to get about the building, what codes we needed to know and (most importantly) what discounts were available from the marvellous cafe front of house (excellent brownies by the way). 

York Theatre Royal Warm-up

Simon warms up…. Do you see how high the stage is? Look at his leg!!!

Ever wondered how backstage/lighting/sound etc know when to start a show? Ever sat in an auditorium and seen people turning back to glare at the lighting box or the sound position looking grumpy because they can see that the auditorium doors are shut but the show hasn't started? (Please don't ever do that by the way. It is very rarely the fault of the technician in the box or at the sound desk's fault that it's late starting. It's far more likely to be that an actor has locked him or herself out whilst having a cigarette or there's been some sort of prop malfunction backstage. There is nothing anyone out front can do to make it start more quickly….) Anyway, for the uninitiated, we have this thing in theatre land called 'clearance'. This will usually be given by the front of house or duty manager to the DSM (me) either via the in-house stage manager or the lighting box by radio, by phone or in person. For example, I'm writing this in Worthing. Here it is radioed to Martin in the lighting box and he tells me over cans (headset with mic). In Birmingham the front of house manager came backstage. In York, it is given by…. 'BAT PHONE!' There's a phone backstage and a blue light on the prompt desk which flashes instead of the phone ringing and then I pick it up and speak to front of house. When I was in York last Halloween I was so impressed with this bat phone that I made a bat sign on it so it flashed like the bat signal (it can get cold and boring on tour in the dark months….) and I was delighted to see that this was still in situ. It was my intention to turn it into a Birdsong phone, but I'm afraid that I didn't get round to it…

BAT PHONE!!!!!!

FUN, FUN, FUN!!!!!:

So much happened in York and I am, once again, in danger of this blog becoming longer than my dissertation (on the Rosetta stone, if anyone's interested I can probably find a copy somewhere…), but I do have to tell you a couple of bits that happened on the social side.
The boys had their boy house in Durham, so we girls had our girl house in York. Lucy had found the bargain this time and had even managed to get the price knocked down a bit more for her, myself, Selma, Lizzie and Carolin. We were had our own townhouse about a 10 minute walk from the theatre, with a little garden, a (very) small parking space for Ernie, big airy rooms and a nice kitchen which became the hub of the house. We had a great time and on more than one occasion stayed up quite late having a good gossip. One night I went for a drink with the lads as the girls said that they were going home for  sober night to watch 'The Little Mermaid'. Were they heck as like. I came back after about an hour to find them in the kitchen drinking wine and vodka, eating crisps and chatting away. So, I did the only thing possible and joined in. Two particular girlies (who will remain nameless) had a very late night indeed, but still managed to be bright and bushy the next….afternoon! 
It wasn't just our house though, Sinead was with a few of the lads and they had a pool table and a jukebox in their basement, so there was a bit of a boys evening over there one night and more than a few beers were drunk.

York is also amazing for having so many secret pubs hidden away and Sam found a fantastic one: On Wednesday night, as I was leaving the theatre I received the following text from Alastair:

'The House of Trembling Madness. Go to evil eye. Keep walking down 3 or 4 doors. There's an off license. Go in there and upstairs…'

Weirdly that made perfect sense. The Evil Eye was a pub that the guys had been to before. There they had an amazing assortment of spirit bottles and George found a shot glass pourer shaped like a tommy gun…. So, I went past The Evil Eye and lo and behold a few doors down was an off licence. In I went and asked 'Is this the house of the trembling madness…?' Yep. I was in the right place. Up the stairs I went and there was a real gem of a pub. If you're not keen on stuffed animal heads then it may not be the place for you, but otherwise it's a cosy little upstairs pub with original beams, a selection of real ales and extremely generous servings of wine……

George and The Evil Eye's spirit collection

Tommy Gun Shot Glass Pourer

House of Trembling Madness

Alastair and  Jonny with stuffed heads behind them

Malcolm with the 'generous' serving of wine

After the trembling madness a few of us more hardy souls decided that we wanted an extra 'snifter' or two and so Alastair, Selma, myself and George went off in search of a bar that we had found back in October. Yeah. Right. We couldn't find it, of course, and so settled for a random bar that seemed to be still open. Can't remember the name, but they did two for one cocktails and they are somewhere in York and open late…. We had a good laugh and I even got chatted up (and I know this will amaze you to know, but this is not something that happens that often) by a very nice rugby playing chap called Nick. Is it this it, you ask? Is this the week when we shall FINALLY get the stories of sexual intrigue and debauchery???

No.
Sorry.
I sent him on his merry way - after drinking one of his cocktails (priorities).
But I do have some nudity for you later on in the blog…..

So, that was Wednesday and Thursday nights. The next night some people needed a bit more of a quiet one. Some of the boys went for a curry and then George joined Sinead and I for…….
A SHOW BAR!

Monroe's Show Bar

Nick, my sound guy for the get-in also works in a place called Monroe's, which is not too far from the theatre. On Fridays and Saturdays they have drag acts from about 10:30 - 12:30am and stay open until 2am. Nick invited us along and we had a great night. We were very good (and I didn't drink -this is part of the 'dry 45' which I'll tell you about at a later date) as we had two shows the next day and so didn't stay very late. But, we did see Marilyn, Liza (fabulous) and Cilla and even saw one audience member getting a make-over to 'Popular' from 'Wicked'. If you are in York then do go along as it's a good night. George suffered a bit of a war wound and got a bit of glass embedded in his hand, but was brilliantly looked after by the staff there. It had been a bit of a few weeks for war wounds. If you've seen the show, then you'll know that Alastair comes on at the end and he and George hug. One night in Durham the hook from the hook and eye in Alastair's jacket had become away from the material. When he hugged George, the hook somehow got up George's nose and when he pulled away from Alastair the hook ripped his nose! He had to do the whole of the last part of the play bleeding! 
Then, halfway through York week, a screw that holds the floor down had come loose during the tunnel scene. When Peter ran on for the last tunnel scene he put his hand right on it…. Owww. They really are brave boys on this tour and Peter carried on as normal despite a bleeding hand!

George and Sinead in Monroe's

While Sam and George had a curry…..

And were a bit tired the next day…...

But you can't have fun without a bit of work too. On the Tuesday morning Jonny and Alastair had a radio interview with Minster FM which was a great success.

Jonny and Alastair hard at work

And then, on the Saturday…. It was our 50th show! This meant that Malcolm, myself and GMoss had done 254 performances in total and Sinead 253! This was celebrated with a spot of 'who can balance on one leg on a crate/stool for the longest' competition. George won, but Peter was a close second with his crane pose. George then presented the company with a celebratory gift of giant cookies for all diets. Nice one George. 

There was also a new nickname. Carolin is now 'The Otter' and Alastair even found her a chocolate one that he thought looked like her. It lasted about an hour before it got eaten…...

George doles out the celebratory cookies

The balancing competition

It's down to the final two…. Peter and George take
it seriously

What do you think? Does it look like her?

Then, after the get-out, George and I set off for a late night road trip to Eastbourne (via Watford) - George challenged me to a variety of car games and won them all (rigged) whilst we navigated the stupid roadworks and diversions that seem to constitute the M1 at the moment…

And that was York.
A grand old week indeed.

It's such a brilliant theatre to work in and I'm sure all the company would join me in thanking everyone there for making it so easy and enjoyable. Hope to see you all again soon!

Worthing next. And I am at home! Yes!

Oh…. I promised you nudity, didn't I? 
Teenage girls of the world, you can now thank me. 
Who needs One Direction when you've got…..

JONNY!

Wha' ya lookin' at?

EXTRA! EXTRA! BIRMINGHAM EXTRA!!!

EXTRA! EXTRA! BIRMINGHAM EXTRA!!!

National Press Night Incident:

I do have to apologise, I completely forgot to mention in my last blog an incident which happened on the Tuesday in Birmingham (I apologise to Simon, in particular as he was most distressed to see that I hadn't mentioned it!).

If you've seen the show then you will know that Jonny Clarke, who plays Tipper/Gregoire throws a grenade in the first tunnelling scene which blows up some Germans who have broken through to the British tunnel. It may surprise you to know, as it is fairly dark in this scene and happens quite quickly, that he does actually throw something (although obviously not a grenade….). It's made of rubber and has a little nub on the end - it's pretty realistic, except for the fact that we keep it a bit of an orange colour so that it catches the light and shows up better. It's the same one that Charlie G Hawkins used last year and boasted that he would successfully throw exactly through the fairly narrow opening that leads in to the wings for every one of the 204 performances. He didn't. Although he was a fair way along the tour before he missed and 'hit the goalpost', as it were. 

So. We've had some fun with the grenade over the last year and a half. Its hit the door, the doorframe, Emily Stride (Marguerite and German soldier last year), Lucy Grattan (Marguerite and German soldier this year), it's gone into the hat of an already dead German soldier and into the auditorium a few times, it's hit me, GMoss, ricocheted off various pieces of furniture in the wings, even ended up in the fly cage and once in Malvern it (slightly terrifyingly) nearly hit the GO button on the sound desk…. But, it has never hit an audience member before. Until now. In Birmingham. On National Press Night…..

It was a beautiful throw as well by Jonny. It soared through the air in a beautiful arc, hit the door frame and bounced off an into the auditorium where it hit… the face of Matt Barningham who was happily enjoying the show with his friend Katy. 

Thankfully he was unharmed and completely saw the funny side (and the cast gave him and Katy some signed programmes - which contained all manner of references to the grenade). So, thank you Matt for being a good sport and also for returning the grenade at the end of the show! 

Here's one more glimpse of the culprit with the offending object . He has promised to continue to improve his aim…. (he hit me in the shoulder with it the other day!)

Jonny and the grenade……

York blog to follow soon!

Laters…..