Taking Tea with Kingsley Amis

In response to Suburban Mum’s heartfelt plea for my return (oh, let me have my dreams!) I felt I should probably post and catch you all up on what I have been up to.

This evening I had dinner with Michael Portillo. Well, not exactly with him. Not actually even in the same room as him. But definitely in the same building and as part of the same event. I rub shoulders with all the stars, me. Actually, I did quite literally rub shoulders with him. Or I would have done were he not two inches shorter than me. Call it a shoulder to elbow brush, if you will.

The other weekend I went to a marvellous party with a traditional seaside theme, hosted by a famous novelist of Mr Katja’s acquaintance. The sun shone, we ate fish and chips, drank pink champagne, rode donkeys, and shouted at the Punch and Judy show, coming home pinkly sun-scorched and very happy at the end of the day. Ah, the halcyon days of summer. Long may they last.

This weekend I shall be riding 50 miles on my bike in aid of the Nehemiah Project. I am somewhat nervous and fear that my behind will not last the distance. I am loath to publish the link to my justgiving page here as it shows my real name, which I would rather the googlebots did not link with my blog. However, if you would like to sponsor me, there is a link on my facebook profile. Every little counts (and thank you to those that have already so generously donated).

I went off on tour recently. Just a little mini tour, taking in Newcastle and Harrogate, but it went terribly well and a good time was had by all, not least the children being entertained. Continuing the animal theme which has characterised my acting roles over the past couple of years, I played a Mexican bird (most entertaining when we had a Spanish woman in the front row for one of the shows …), a very posh hare, a westcountry cow and a cock-er-nee fly.

The cow was a very loud, panto dame-type character, and I used to run in and out of the audience, talking to the children and generally camping it up. One day we had a boy of about 8 or 9 years old in the audience, who was too old and cool for the show (it’s aimed at 3-4 year olds), but too young to get the jokes aimed at the adults, and therefore seemed pretty bored.

In the cow scene, there is the classic panto device of shouting for a character who has disappeared off stage, shouting louder and louder until they come back. I picked on Bored Boy, who very obligingly yelled his little heart out. I then exited at the end of the scene, and Sally, one of the other actors, did a little adlib about me being a mad cow. Bored boy then told her in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t MAD, I was COOL.

Oh yes, I’ve still got it …

Ne Me Quitte Pas

Inspired by Punctuation’s post about the marvellous Edith Piaf the other day, here’s a video of Jacques Brel performing Ne Me Quitte Pas. Most of you will probably know the Nina Simone version, which is also good, but Brel’s version is just … unsurpassed. Even if you don’t understand the words, you can read the pain in his face and know that this is a man who is having his heart ripped out, slowly and painfully. Amazing.

How to be dead

In contrast to Ms P’s post on Vox today, I tried to be a good Samaritan this morning and nearly got myself beaten up for my pains. As I walked down the street outside Brixton tube I saw two people bump into each other, and a phone dropped to the ground. It looked to me like it had fallen out of the girl’s bag, and so I picked up the phone and ran after her to give it back. Before I reached her, however, I was grabbed around the back of my neck and shaken by a guy yelling, ‘where are you going with my phone?’ All I could do was stammer an apology and hand it back, but it scared the hell out of me. My hard London exterior is not feeling very tough today.

Perspective

Apparently I’m too thin to feature in an ad for Special K bars. I’m not sure whether to be pleased at relative slimness or disappointed at missing out on the potential for getting paid.

True Dare Kiss

True Dare Kiss is the second part of The Red Devils trilogy of plays by Debbie Horsfield, set in Salford in the early 80s. One character, Alice, marries her childhood sweetheart, Kevin, while still very young. In fact, at the age of 19, the marriage has broken down and she is contemplating leaving him. She meets her friend Nita at 3 in the morning to talk about what she’s going to do.

‘Outside that house is the clothes on me back, an’ in me pocket a door-key an’ two cigarettes. Kevin’s got things. He doesn’t need me. He’s got kids, he doesn’t need mine.

But I could live with that. I could live with Carly – meet her in the shops, ask her what he likes for his tea. I could have Joey round every night. I can compromise, Nita. People do compromise. People put up with all sorts of things. If I left – what could I do? What could I be if I wasn’t Kevin’s?’

I used to do this piece at drama school and always found those last two lines unbearably moving. How could one person’s identity be so bound up in someone else that they didn’t know how to exist without them? I didn’t think I’d ever understand it. Now, however, I do. It’s not a person that I’m tied to, though, it’s my career. I feel like I’ve been stagnating for a long time now – but if I leave, what could I do? What could I be if I wasn’t an actor?

It’s late, I’m tired, I’m emotional. I’m not really looking for practical answers, but I needed to write this down. I’m off on tour for two weeks as of tomorrow – no, THIS – morning. Hopefully I’ll be in a better frame of mind by the time I get back.

Anarchic Mishaps

This post is prompted by a story on Singing Librarian’s blog. I started to write this in his comments but then realised that it was far too long and actually deserved a post of its very own, so here we go…

It’s very true that if you say and do things with confidence on stage, the audience will rarely notice anything that’s gone awry. My best example of this is from one of my graduation shows at drama school. We were doing Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, which is a political farce about police brutality. Unfortunately there was a nasty sickness and diarrhoea bug going around and two of the cast were struck down, along with our lighting operator. We therefore had to cancel one night. By the next night, however, the two cast members were sufficiently well again to go on stage – or so we thought, anyway.

We managed to get through most of the play, but when it came to the final scene everything went wrong. In this scene, the four policemen in the play were supposed to do a chase which involved running off upstage left, running around backstage and reappearing downstage right. I (as the journalist, Maria Feletti) was left on stage talking to the Maniac character. On this particular night, the policemen all raced off stage as expected – but only three out of four of them reappeared. We discovered afterwards that Simon (one of the two actors who had been ill the day before) had collapsed unconscious in the wings; however the two of us who were left on stage had no idea what had happened and the three that had just reappeared were fairly hazy too, as everything had happened very fast.

The final scene is one which runs very fast and very slick, with lines coming one on top of the other, no one person having much more than a couple of lines at a time. It is response-driven and absolutely relies on everyone giving and taking their cues fast for it to work. However, with one person out, this meant that some of the lines wouldn’t happen. There was a moment of pure terror for the five of us on stage as we all looked at each other and tried to communicate telepathically. What the HELL do we do now? Apparently the director (who was running the lighting box in the continued absence of our lighting operator) was about to bring the lights down and close the show – when we collectively took a metaphorical deep breath and launched into the scene.

It was one of the most terrifying and yet most beautiful things I’ve ever been part of as an actor. The moment when we put our faith completely in each other and when we all came together as a company, totally and utterly. Simon’s lines were taken up by other people and it JUST WORKED. There was no fudging, nobody talking over anyone else and the scene went absolutely beautifully. This happened to be the night that my family and friends had all come to see the show and so I casually asked them if they had noticed anything wrong in the final scene – not one of them had. A wonderful testament to the power of teamwork and something that I will rememember for as long as I live.

The Boy Friend

On a sultry summer’s evening in London, what could be better than going to the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park to watch The Boy Friend? Maybe going to Regents’ Park Open Air Theatre to watch The Boy Friend, preceded by jugs of Pimms and catching up with one’s father. Hurrah! Wednesday night was a winner on all counts then.

Dad phoned on Tuesday afternoon to say that he had a meeting on Thursday, so why didn’t he come up on Wednesday night and we could go to the theatre – how about Guys and Dolls? Fine, said I. Wednesday morning dawned as hot as ever, so Dad phoned again to say that he couldn’t bear to sit in a stuffy West-End Theatre (seriously, Andy and Cameron, aircon would be a great idea in this weather) so why didn’t we head over to Regent’s Park? The show is unashamed silly fluff, but sitting outside would be far more pleasant than sweltering inside. Great idea! said I. Of course, as he was paying for the tickets, I wasn’t really going to put up too much resistance, but it sounded like a top plan anyway. The only slight drawback was that every time Dad and I have gone to watch shows at Regent’s Park in the past it’s absolutely bucketed it down with rain and the performances have been cancelled by the time we get to the interval. Ah well – looking on the bright side, a bit of rain would probably have done London good, so we decided to tempt fate.

What a great show! Yes, the content is as light as marshmallow, but in this heat I certainly wasn’t interested in having to think too hard. The choreography was great, the costumes delightfully over the top and there were some fantastic performances as well, notably from Summer Strallen as Maisie Merryweather. Definite shades of Bonnie Langford there, but that suited the role down to the ground. In fact, all of Mme Dubonnet’s ‘Young Ladies’ gave great performances, particularly in their ensemble work. Their timing was spot on and they were silly and giggly without being grating. Wonderful stuff – I highly recommend it.

“I woke up only slightly shocked that I’d defrocked a priest.”

A few weeks ago I went to see Avenue Q (fab – go see) at the newly renamed Noel Coward Theatre (previously The Albery) with my friend Alex. Alex is, like me, a jobbing actor but she very generously bought my ticket with the proviso that I give her a singing lesson in preparation for an audition which she has coming up. In our usual happy fashion we forgot to organise this until she phoned me the day before yesterday in a right flap, because it’s in 10 days’ time and she had no idea what she was going to sing – panic!

So last night she came around and we spent the evening going through songbooks. This was great fun – it’s been a while since I really went through a lot of my music. I have a few favourite songs that I tend to wheel out for auditions but have got a bit lazy in terms of learning new stuff. (I could do with getting myself along to a singing teacher every once in a while for a kick up the arse so if anyone knows a good one in London then let me know – however, I digress….)

We eventually decided she should sing You Can Always Count on Me, a song from City of Angels by Cy Coleman (click here for links to song samples). This brought back lots of memories for me – it was one of my standards at drama school, and I performed it at pretty much all of our first year presentations. Unfortunately the powers that be decided that I shouldn’t sing it at our final graduation showcase and it was given to another girl, while I sang Only He from Starlight Express, which really doesn’t do me many favours at all vocally. The jazzy style of You Can Always… suits my voice much better, as does the character – a cynical secretary, unlucky in love; as opposed to a starry-eyed singing railway carriage – er, yes, moving on…

City of Angels is a fantastic show, and I only wish that I’d had the chance to see it on stage. It’s set in 1940s LA, in the world of gumshoe detectives and seedy movie directors. The premise is that a struggling writer, Stine, is writing a film script centred around an ex-cop, Stone, who is looking into the disappearance of Malory, a poor little rich girl. We therefore have a play within a play situation and can see both stories unfolding throughout the show. Cleverly, all of the actors, apart from the ones playing Stine and Stone, double to play their alter egos in real-world versus film world. To prevent confusion, the show is colour-coded, with the film characters being in black and white. At the end of the show the two worlds merge, when Stone steps out of the film into the real world and confronts his writer, Stine. Sounds complicated when written like that, but the book is great and the music and songs are wonderful – one day I’d love to put it on, but it’s far from cheap to do, due to the complex sets and costumes, so I think I might have to find myself a millionaire sponsor first!

Alex is coming round again next week so that we can work on the song further once she’s had a chance to look through the music and learn it properly. She’s not a confident singer, but she’s one heck of an actress and it will be really interesting to see where she takes it. Despite me being theoretically the teacher, it’s going to be a learning experience for me too, as I try to look at the song from another point of view: I’m thoroughly looking forward to it.

No Man is an Island (part 1)

Lizzie: Poor old Mary, she'll die of love.
Mary: Poor old Mary, she'll die of loneliness.
(from Mary and Lizzie by Frank McGuinness)

 

 

Over the weekend my friends Susie and Lee had a party in town to celebrate their recent engagement. I've known Susie for just over 10 years now, which puts her in the category of one of my longest-standing friends. We met in our gap year, at Stratford-upon-Avon college, where we were both doing the Post-Eighteen drama course. It was an incomparable year and please don't think that I am being overdramatic when I say that it changed my life. I had known for years that I wanted to act, but I think being a post-eighteenie gave me the tools to do so. I nearly didn't make it onto the course – Debbie, the course tutor, wasn't sure if I was right for it and put me onto a reserve list in case one of her first choices decided not to take their place. Thankfully, one of them didn't and the rest, as they say, is history.

It wasn't so much the acting training at Stratford that helped me – although obviously that was a big part of it – it was being drawn out of myself and learning to rely on other people. Although naturally a quiet person, I became more gregarious and my social side was brought out. There were some tough lessons to be learnt along the way – one of them being that I wasn't half as good an actor as I thought I was. I was too withdrawn and selfish, for a start. I'd probably have made a fantastic Hamlet at that point in time, but ensemble work? Nah.

In our second show I was cast as one of the leads. Towards the end of the rehearsal period I was absolutely exhausted and on the point of collapse, utterly frustrated that things weren't going as I wanted them to. Tim, the director, took me aside and said he was worried about me. I was on the verge of shaking my head, smiling and telling him that I was absolutely fine when he very gently said that I needed to let other people in as I could only go so far on my own. This stopped me in my tracks completely – I had never considered the possibility that I couldn't do everything I wanted to do under my own steam. He made me realise that there are times when you need to be big enough to ask for, and accept, help.