Two to Tango...

No matter how good the show you are in, how confident you are in the product, every actor worries about audience reaction. Currently when I get my call to stage (30 minutes or so after curtain up) the first thing I do is look through a little peep hole at the audience to get an idea of the size of the house and shorty after I'll make enquiring hand signals to the other actors as to what tonight's crowd are like. Part of me knows it shouldn't matter -after all the show must go on even if they are throwing tinned fruit- but the truth is our evening on stage is heavily influenced by the audience's contribution. It is possible for a play to take off in spite of the audience but generally the experience on each side of the footlights is dependent on the other. When it works (and mostly it does) it can be electric: actors and audience committed, focused and all buzzing together around a great piece of drama.

But there are pitfalls to negotiate along the way...

For the actors there can be a tendency to interpret quiet in the audience as hostility "They hate it!" the actor may internally wail if lines that usually get a reaction don't (or perhaps more accurately "They hate me!"). When, for example, 'laugh lines' have been met with an unfamiliar stoic silence in the auditorium it's not unusual to see actors come off stage and give the audience a two fingered salute. I confess I have done the same myself.
There is an old adage that "you can't hear a smile" which is certainly worth remembering in these moments but in addition some audiences are simply listeners (you don't realise this until moments of tension and suspense when you are rewarded with a silence in which you could hear a pin drop into a bowl of syrup- although you generally have to earn those moments so they tend to be well into the play by which point a "sod you" attitude may have already been adopted).
The truth is we actors are vulnerable out there, but it's always worth trying to regard the audience as 'friendly until proven otherwise'. It's like coming across a group hoodies on the street, one's instinctive reaction is concern but statistically one probably needn't worry: It's more likely to be your twelve year old cousin Tarquin and his strange, malodorous but harmless chess club pals than someone on crack cocaine waiting to relieve you of your new iPhone. Repeat after me "Friendly until proven otherwise" (although there's no harm arranging the keys in your pocket into a makeshift knuckle-duster just in case) (so long as you recognise Tarquin before you go for the eyes)

I believe the secret for the audience is that it's a bit like dinner at Waggamamma: You need to approach it with a generous spirit, then when another diner gets sat next to you, you chat and enjoy something together- it may turn out they were your godmother's first lover or a fellow Coventry supporter or they beat you in an eBay auction for an occasional table. To put it simply the experience becomes more than the sum of its parts. If you sit down without a generous spirit and others share your table it's just someone who can listen in on your conversation, limit your elbow room and hog the soy sauce.
In a theatre where I've worked a lot, Saturday night audiences always seemed to be the hardest to please. Mid week audiences would come with a 'happy-go-lucky' attitude as though they were just pleased to be having a cheeky evening out on a school night, Friday night audiences were excited and committed to having fun whatever you put in front of them, but the Saturday night crowd would always take ages to defrost as though wary we might be wasting the jewel in their weekend crown. Don't guard enjoyment like a gaoler, be a mid-week audience and take fun where you find it.

So as you near the theatre release the angst of your day, lift your eyes, open your heart and look forward to a couple of hours of pleasure- and we in turn will presume you are benevolent estranged family or friends we just haven't yet met.
That way on the night when you're in and in the wings I look to Ashley Cook with inquiring eyes he will raise both thumbs, smile and mouth "They're really lovely"

See you on the green!

The Other Half

There's a beautiful book by Simon Annand called "The Half" that with several hundred photographs shows several hundred actors in those last 35 minutes before curtain up. It's a super book filled, as you might expect, with vivacity, ebullience, frivolity, playfulness, as well as no small amount of ego, but also as you might not expect with introspection, doubt, melancholy and subdued focus.

I suppose naturally enough it started me wondering what sort of an image might sum up my pre-show experience. The truth though, which Annand's books captures so wonderfully, is that the half is a slippery, multi-faceted beast. Not only is it different for each actor but also different for each show.
Firstly and most obviously varying make up and costume demands mean that some roles take longer to prepare for than others. Incidentally during the course of a run you'll often find actors, consciously or otherwise, 'playing chicken' with each other- leaving getting ready as late as they dare until one night someone arrives on-stage breathless and still fastening their flies. I suppose this stems from a desire to inject some drama and excitement back into proceedings. Speaking of excitement, a good friend of mine, whose name I will never disclose (or at least not for less than a double gin and tonic) is a strong advocate of what he calls "The Danger Wank": a form of self amusement taken as close to your call to the stage as you can stomach. Needless to say I always knock twice before entering his dressing room and I'm sure there isn't a costume mistress in the land that would condone such an unsavory gamble.
But self imposed distraction aside, tying your own bow tie, fat suits, wigs, aging up, fake moustaches and tights all take large bites out of that last half hour. My own bête noire is cravats- a cravat seems to me a very oily critter indeed: One night it may well give in easily and do as instructed but the next the same neck-tie with the same technique will ruck, writhe and wriggle like a catholic schoolgirl in a front row seat at a JLS concert. There's no telling what mood those damn things will be in so one has to leave plenty of time (or swallow your pride and ask wardrobe for a pre-tied one with a Velcro back fastening)

In addition to costume and make-up requirements some shows (and also some theatre spaces) are more physically demanding than others, or require an explosive energy from the get go. Cue much pre-show limbering, shaking and bouncing. Equally though (and I risk being thrown out of the magic circle for saying so) some shows/roles you can pretty much just turn up. In that case lounging on a green room sofa watching others limber, shake and bounce on "Strictly Come Dancing" is more than sufficient prep.

Finally you get the unusual exceptions: If one starts the play partly naked, the half may well find you frantically squeezing in some last minute press ups to desperately try to make up for the two months of taking it easy in the gym. Or you may need to be set on stage before the audience arrive (often to make a surprise entrance): For one run I spent twenty pre-show minutes every night curled up in a tiny cupboard (although receiving "The Anne Frank Award"at the end-of-run-party nearly made up for it). Some good friends have had to immerse themselves in baths of mud (for 'The Tempest' i think) and paddling pools of water (For the sodden beginning to 'Neville's Island') so the half isn't all crafty cigs and coffee.

So what best sums up my half experience? In addition to those above, contenders could be gobbling grizzly remains of a microwave meal, looking for a plaster, on the phone directing friends to the theatre, trying to learn last minute line changes, throwing up, writing first night cards, trying to stop a nose-bleed and once on tour when the half was called myself and the entire company were in a minibus more than 35 minutes away lost on a Belgium B-road (the theatre was at least in Belgium- we weren't that lost. But we did go up late).

I had originally thought that my half would best be summed up by a picture of me laughing and horsing around with friends. But actually I think a fairer image would be one of me in some state of dishevelment, undress and light panic looking for the costume mistress for help with my missing sock/shirt/wig tape, unruly cravat or breached breeches.
Incidentally this seems to be an omission in the book so Mr Annand if you want to fill this gap for the next edition of "The Half" you can find me flapping about between 6.55 and 7.25pm nightly until next Oct in dressing room 8 of the St Martin's Theatre, London!

Is "Whiting-Up" Allowed?

I have just been in the very unusual but fortunate position of going on holiday with my agent's blessing. It's normally a real quandary for an actor: You're desperate for a break away from the big smoke but you know as soon as you book that flight your agent will call with an audition to be the new face of Persil and an offer to do a guest spot on 'Midsummer Murders' (or more likely an audition to be the 'face' of Anusol and a schools tour around the Lambeth borough).

It's not that you get told off as such for taking time off but the "disappointed" tone says it all and there's an implication that you've somehow sabotaged your own career: As if the only reason you'll be playing children's parties not the National this autumn is the ten days you took off in early May. I've even tried sneaking off for a week on the qt, but it's odds on that despite the fact that you haven't heard from your office for several weeks you'll get a non-plussed call asking why you have a foreign ring-tone. I was actually caught out by my agent once while on a ski-lift in Austria, he had bizarrely called just to see if i could scuba dive. I can't scuba dive, but was tempted to say "If you hadn't have discouraged me from taking that holiday to Egypt last year I might be able to" but as I was AWOL up a mountain I thought I'd better not.

Anyway I had already planned to slip off (I have an 11 month contract about to start in town so it's my last opportunity for a while) but still hearing my agent say the words "You'd better take a holiday now" was a novel and pleasant experience.
So off I toddled to Egypt (no I still can't scuba-dive) and had a very nice time thank-you-very-much. Unfortunately despite trying to avoid one I now have a deep, golden tan which may well look slightly incongruous when in a months time on stage I will turn up on skis in the English mid-winter as a sergeant in the Berkshire police force. I'm hoping a combination of powder and stage lighting will bring me back to a suitably pasty pallor. If not a slight rewrite might be needed: "Good evening sir. Sergeant Trotter, Barbados Police"

Death by Jazz Hands

I love to see a well marked up prop table. An intricate web of crisscrossing electrical tape that signifies that nearby there lurks a spiderlike stage manager with an eye for detail. When a prop is absent the tape clearly outlines the missing item like chalk around a crime-scene body that's already been whisked off to the morgue. In short it is an elegant and effective way to keep props where they are needed and meant to be, and it's a practice that probably could have saved me from a rather surprising demise...

"Where's the poisoned sherry?"- The horrors of an unmarked prop table

Several years ago I was playing a minor role in a production of Martin Sherman's achingly powerful "Bent". After the usual thorough and carefully choreographed roughing up from some impeccably dressed Nazis I was laying face down waiting for one of the dapper wretches to lift my head, slit my throat and dispatch me back to the green room from whence I came. On one night however, no 'bloody blameful blade' arrived. My initial thought was perhaps the SS officer's agent was in so he was trying a little something 'off menu' for their benefit. But the hiatus continued until, just as I had decided to crawl for it (perhaps tonight was the night I'd get away), there was an earth shattering gunshot. As anyone would, I looked round from my prone position to see who had copped it only to find out that it was in fact me.
My colleague was looking at me from behind the barrel of a gun normally reserved for act II with a wild look in his eye that somehow contained panic, apology and pleading. Quick as a pig I dutifully flung myself the remaining inch to the floor and prayed for the blackout.

The post mortem (held in the bar) revealed that the rigged knife had been misplaced and in the ensuing backstage ruckus a quick choice was made between strangulation with a hand towel or death by blank firer. Either way it was too late to warn me. I think in the scheme of things I got off lightly: It may have been unexpected but at least I was seen off with a credible weapon.

Friends of mine have been less fortunate...

As the climax to a sexy, energetic and bloody montage that opened a production of Romeo and Juliet set in 20's mafia America, a couple walk into bar and take a seat, a beat later a table is overturned and from underneath it up pop three goons with tommy guns who open fire on the couple. The couple riddled with bullets, fall backwards toppling tables, chairs, glasses and all. It's a savage ending to a tightly choreographed, hectic opening that sets the tone for the next two hours. Backstage of course it's like a high speed dance- actors making quick changes and multiple entrances, all pushed along by a pulsating soundtrack (on which all gunshots are also prerecorded).
The show is a success, running smoothly and out on tour when a tiny inexplicable oversight causes chaos. It's not until the goons crawl into place do they realise that the tommy guns aren't set, but the couple are already entering the bar and there's only time for a quick whispered "What do you mean there's no guns?" as the soundtrack drives the action unstoppably forward, and then its all muscle memory and hope as they stand upending the table, and possibly in an attempt to show the couple they have no guns or possibly because elementary dance training never really leaves you, waggle their open palms at their chums. Their victims who presumably for want of something better to do, or possibly just in a bid to get off the stage, or perhaps because there is still the sound of guns firing go down as usual like they've been filled with bullets even though they've only really been subjected to an amateur musical theatre big finish.

Quite what the audience made of this avant garde if somewhat jazzy take on a mob hit is uncertain. Though no-one in the company was confident enough to offer the ubiquitous cure-all "I'm sure they didn't notice loves"

So I'm a fan of anything that will help make sure the gun/suicide note/briefcase of money is where it is supposed to be, and that most definitely includes the marked up prop table. Not only does it appeal to my anal everything-in-it's-place sensibilities but it is also deeply reassuring. It says to the actor "You are in safe hands" it says "On my watch things will be where you expect them to be" and most importantly it says "Tonight there will be no death by jazz hands".

"Where the hell have you been?"

Life in London is sometimes not conducive to writing. Life in rep is often barely conducive to breathing.
That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it like Kate Winslet to the broken buoyant wreckage of the Titanic.

Working in rep has again been both a privilege and a feat of endurance. Wonderful friendships have been born, grown fat and settled into a lively athletic health that I'm certain will survive the rigours of time. I've nervously awaited, cheered, belittled, bemoaned, lambasted, over-analysed, over-rated, tolerated and celebrated any number of reviews and opinions of our precious work. I've been both the victim of almost debilitating nerves and also guilty of almost shameful apathy. I've drunk gallons of wind-down pints and wind-up coffees. Microwaved every ready meal Sainsburys has to offer. Grown moustaches, shaved moustaches, glued on moustaches, lost moustaches, cursed, damned and loved moustaches. Learnt lines at five in the morning because there just isn't enough hours in the day, worked like never before, spoken in 9 accents, murdered 3 people, fallen in love, fallen off stage, undressed in front of 500 people nightly, played the part of my career (so far), cried, sweat and bled, and all on equity minimum. I would very happily do it all again tomorrow.
Ok, maybe the day after tomorrow.

Now then... where did i leave my life?