Month: July 2021

Mister Ansell was one of my teachers back when I was at boarding school. His son Tim used to be present as well with his long hair and beard and his alsatian dog. I used to run into Tim and go for walks in the grounds of what was a normal school to my mind back then and an incredible luxury of a school to the same mind now.

His dad used to recommend me books. He never actually taught me English, but he was an English teacher and he found me standing in his classroom reading “Under Milk Wood” out loud one afternoon. I didn’t even know what a Welsh accent sounded like then – I was eleven. I had pulled the book from off the shelf and I was immediately sucked in by the muscularity of it all. I wanted to munch those words. This is a time when I kept being told not to whisper as I was “silently” reading in class. I always wanted to speak the words. Books were scripts – and Under Milk Wood? It’s still like a weird script. I understood very little of it but that’s never stopped a lot of the actors I’ve worked with on Shakespeare over the years. I liked Under Milk Wood.

“What’s it about?”, Mr Ansell asked me, perhaps wanting some sort of summary. “Organ Morgan. Captain Cat…” I didn’t have a clue what it was about. I just wanted to read it for the words of it. For the script of it. For the feel of it. For the meat.

Lyndsey Turner and whoever makes the decisions at The National Theatre – they decided that the show to reopen official UK theatre with – that show would be Under Milk Wood. But how to do it?

It’s framed in a nursing home. It’s about memory. It’s about selfishness. It’s about family. It’s smart. They’ve wheeled in Michael Sheen, who I haven’t seen since we were Bright Young Things, and they’ve found a way for it not to be just the clever Welshman doing what I did in Mr Ansell’s classroom and expounding muscular poetry. They’ve made it human.

I was emotional anyway. Theatre with lights in a building. What a treat. The Olivier, huge but with that incredible pin-drop acoustic. We were sitting in the round, spaced out. A logistical nightmare even getting to the seat, but once we were there we could all stretch our legs. No interval – the whole day in one. The village. The people. The stories.

Sian Phillips was in it. 88 years old. One of the things she had to do was sing a song. Polly’s song about Willy Wee – the dead lover who she still misses. I have no idea what she filled it with. It doesn’t matter what she filled it with. The fact is – she filled it. And that is the memory I’m going to carry from this first bit of theatre back after Covid. All of us audience together in a room, in a matinee, in that moment simply listening to Sian singing a simple song but with such truth and connection that many of us wept unknowing – we knew we were listening to the truth. The truth can hurt.

It’s costly, that kind of vulnerability. God love Sian Philips. She’s 88 and she’s still giving completely. I think we’d be best friends.

London.

I love London, but I love it for the throng when I can handle the throng. Right now it’s just an expensive place. I’ve got friends here, all sorted into pods. I’ve got fish here all automatically fed in their tank. I’ve got a big electronic window into fantasy against one of the living room walls.

I’m sleeping on my sofa tonight, and before going down I’ve been catching up on the latest Rick and Morty, which thankfully doesn’t disappoint in terms of being deliberately obtuse and morally challenging and weird. It’s just a fucking cartoon and everybody wants to wax lyrical about it because it defines itself by being clever. It IS clever. But I’m in on the joke, so I get it, so I feel clever by getting it. I’m basically the target audience. I grew up reading weird sci-fi and comics, and occasionally getting into theoretical conversations like the ones that have given rise to some of the core concepts in the episodes I’ve been watching. But it’s not necessarily the most welcoming tv…

There’s one more to go and I’ll likely cram it down me before I crash even though it’s almost 1am already. Ahhh the luxury of being here in my flat with all my distractions! I can go to sleep when I please, dammit. Because I’m not up in the morning to carry furniture or learn stuff or drive or anything. If I’m going to be in this London where I’m normally freaking out about how I’m going to pay my council tax, I might as well make use of the devices I’ve sunk time and money into for the express purpose of reality avoidance. No work tomorrow. I’ll get to go to a theatre and watch other people work. So tonight I can let the clock tick past 1am and just get another cup of tea.

I’ve got the first second of the latest episode queued up.

I might not get totally up to date tonight though, frankly. I thought I’d cue up the most recent one and then write my blog and see if I had anything left in the tank at all. I’m feeling pretty zonked though. All I did today was travel up from Brighton and then get used to being in London again. But this city – even half shut it’s an assault on the senses. Even just getting from Victoria Station to my flat I saw more people than I’ve seen in a week, all with their individual shit going on.

I’m partly fried by London, partly by the decoy episode I’ve just watched. Incredible TV but dark, and not necessarily helpful to me when I’m really just not used to people. I’ll feel better in the morning.

I’ve paid for another year of WordPress.

This blog, and things like it – there’s no room for it in the way things are structured. The expectation is that money must be changing hands as a result of it, so everybody wants a piece. Facebook is drooling to charge me for hits. WordPress charges a small fortune just to provide the engine and I can’t even use plugins unless I pay a third again. It’s almost an act of defiance to put this out and not share it widely and let people find it if they want to, and not be constantly linking major companies. I’m supposed to be writing disingenuous advertorial type “content” about how THE NEW EARWIG BAR CHANGED MY LIFE – YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT IT CAN DO!

I’m not supposed to be just plonking down the various daily mundanities that constitute the life of a jobbing actor in a pandemic and then fucking off and leaving the unpaid for Facebook autoshare to put it in the bin.

I’m winding down at Lou’s. Mao is snoring under the coat rack. Lou is dozing. It’s quiet, and there’s not much weather tonight, nor much traffic. Just the grimblings of the cat and the occasional twitch from Lou as she trips over a paving stone in her dream.

I’ve booked an acting job – clearly my willow karma from all the Wales joy. Hurrah. More about that anon, but it gives me a spot of lovely focus in this strange summer. It’s not the longest job but it kind of can’t be because everybody keeps getting shut down so booking a long job is taking a huge risk. It’s such a crap situation we are all in, but slowly and steadily perhaps we will start to click back into gear. There’s gonna be a hangover like you wouldn’t believe from all this. There’ll still be people in five years from now who haven’t dared leave their house – not even to attend the burning of Parliament. But yeah, I know where I’m going to be for three weeks this summer. I’m going to be in Oxford doing lovely things. Hurray.

My company bank account went live this morning, so now I actually have to start making things alongside being in things. That’s a good focus to have amongst all this bollocks. It seems going to Jersey and sorting my shit out is going to eventually mean that there are lovely things for people to do. The diary is starting to fill up. Joy. I’d better seize these last few weeks of absolutely nothing with both hands. Some of us are going to look back on the last year or so with a strange nostalgia, as a weirdly peaceful time despite all the explosions and horrors…

I’ve had a lovely time. I met Lou and a cute cat. And now I’ve got that acting job lined up I can let myself off the hook a bit…

After a day in Brighton, I wanted to give the evening to the football. It’s not my big game, but I’m always curious about these cultural bindings. And England was playing Denmark.

I like the Denmark team. They stood together by instinct to protect their friend when he had a heart problem on the pitch. I also like the England team. They have been defying the basic jingoism of their fans and trying to force some sort of nuance and conversation as they take the knee to the anthem. The more they win, the harder it is to characterise their small degree of liberalism as “weakness”. That’s one of the many ways in which the hateful would have destabilised them had they gone out early.

I don’t really care. It’s a bunch of millionaires kicking a ball. But I like to be in touch with the things that move energy. And this game this evening was doing a lot of that. Plus I’ve got money on the England team to win.

I lay around on the beach until just before the match, and then headed to The Thomas Kempe where I thought I’d be able to watch it. It had just kicked off when I arrived. Fat chance of watching it there though. I was treated like a problem and not a person. Everybody is still freaking out about Covid, sure, and I regret being passive aggressive with the incompetent twit who refused me entry without looking, thinking or trying to solve. But – I can’t stand drones. And that particular drone deserved a little bit of contempt.

I ended up down the road, in a looser place, welcomed to the table of a local mobster. I could sense immediately I was getting myself into somewhere with some character. The guy was high status, loud and very much known in his little pond. He welcomed me, and I felt comfortable to switch my energy up to his for the evening. “GET IN!” I’m glad England won as he’s not the sort of guy you want associating you with a bad night. I think he’d just got out of chokey: “Somebody told me you was dead. I was thrilled. I bought everybody a round. Now … you’re here again … You know you owe me money, right?”

We had a good night though, at that lively noisy table in that characterful pub surrounded by unusual fashionably dressed Brighton lads who knew the guy who had welcomed me to his table. We all wanted the same thing, at heart, in that strange pub. We wanted England not to lose. I had £20 on it. My tablegiver had 2 grand.

We left on first name terms but I didn’t give them my number. Now I’m back with the cat and hooray for England etc… Seems I’ve barely arrived in Brighton before I’ve got to know the local mob boss. Makes me double glad that England won.

I’m not very good at stopping. Lou has this whole background of Vipassana and meditation and stillness. My brain twitches the whole time. I’d probably enjoy the challenge of sitting still for a few days, but I’m forever thinking about the next thing I need to do or want to do or think I must do. We’ve been having a relaxing day but I keep twitching. I’ll stand up suddenly and walk around a bit or I’ll say something out loud, or part of me will just be jiggling. Right now as I write my right foot is going round in circles. I’ve usually got that nervous energy tweaking out of me somewhere. Lou makes lists and then she chills out in total stillness and then somehow everything on the list ends up done anyway while I’m still twitching and I’ve achieved less than her.

She’s agreed to help out at Buddhafield Festival for six days – in a week or so. I had the opportunity to apply but I don’t feel like I can spare the time. I want to be twitching all my energy towards getting myself a decent acting job, rather than zenning out in a field in Taunton.

This morning I helped my friend with a self tape for a major TV show, and one of the characters I had to read is a part I auditioned for at Elstree over ten years ago. I was in tech week for an experimental Macbeth, and didn’t stop to realise it was a major part I was auditioning for. I took time off on the morning of our showing at a subterranean church in Holborn, with my head full of Shakespeare, and got on the train. I realised on the train that I had only learnt one out of about 8 scenes I had been asked to learn. The director literally gave me one reading of one scene – (not the one I’d learnt) – and sent me home. “Thank you, Al. That’ll be all.” I was half focused on getting back to rehearsal. The casting director looked crestfallen. I kind of just … left. A bit shocked, sure. But…

The enormity of the fact that this part still exists a decade later only really just landed on me this morning. Circumstances. It was clearly not to be. But I should have looked a lot closer at the audition material, and maybe I should’ve apologetically cut out of the barely paid experimental Shakespeare showing I was swamped in, so I could’ve given myself either a decent shot at over a decade of employment at a high level, or at the very least not put myself in a position where I have never been seen by that casting director since. I’ve missed a few shots, but looking back that was a big drop. I know the guy that plays the part – worked with him closely for a short while back in the day. He’s always been a bit starry. Chances are I was just in as a backup option, but nevertheless, an opportunity dropped. Ow. Those big things don’t come round very often and usually I nail them if they do so it’s always hard to contemplate the big drops. Plus the director was, frankly, a bit of a dick about it. One reading of one scene and a “Thank you?” Up yours, mate. Back then I was on the back foot as I knew I was hugely underprepared. Otherwise I would have held my ground.

So yeah. Thinking about it that’s probably why I’ve been twitching and restless all day. To see that character name in the script in 2021 reading for a friend who is taping their audition. Right there was a sliding door. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so broke for ten years if I’d realised I was in for a big part and dropped my friends in the shit with their showing and worked like hell towards the audition.

Still. I didn’t drop my friends in the shit. And I’ve done a whole hell of a lot more like that experimental subterranean Shakespeare in the decade following that fucked meeting. I just got back from doing experimental Welsh things and it was glorious. “It’s not even fringe, what you’ve just done” says my friend who is working at The National, not in a judgmental manner, just trying to work out where to put it. Because yeah. It’s not. I do a lot of very very odd things and have done for ages. I bloody love it too. It keeps me happy.

Sure, I might have dropped everything and crammed that part and then maybe I would’ve got it and been nominated for a few soap awards and what have you and maybe I’d be happy and maybe not. Who the hell knows. What I do know that I still want and need to work. I’ve still got plenty of unfinished business. And the industry seems to be picking up. And I want a slice of the pie. So I’m not gonna go to Buddhafield Festival to relax.

And you can guarantee that the director of the next big thing I’m auditioning for will be at Buddhafield and I won’t meet them now because I’m not going.

Brighton is a windstorm. I came here on the train, partly because of the cat and partly to see Lou. She’s catsitting in her friend’s palatial apartment down the road, so I’m here too making sure Mao isn’t starved of company at hers. I just said goodbye to her and stumped into Kemptown under a huge umbrella. This feels like autumn but I’m gonna hold out hope that we have more summer to come. Lou has been dreaming into various festivals she wants to volunteer at or attend. I’m dreaming about getting the hell out of the familiar. Not that there’s anywhere we can really escape to. It’s not like this is just a crappy political situation or a war where one can just escape over the mountains into Switzerland with the singing children. Everybody in Europe has a vested interest in making things harder for the British than it already is with the pandemic and those shifting regulations and concerns. Plus everybody in Europe and everywhere is lesser or greater degrees of fucked. I really really want to escape, or to know that I have a possible escape coming. But the whole idea of freedom is covered in plastic. We are literally fantasising about escape from the planet, via this absurd suicidal space race between the three people who could achieve world peace with the money we’ve given them.

I stumped to the Thomas Kemp pub and I’m sitting here alone.

You order by app. There’s no contact anymore except when the drink gets dropped at the table. They have this limbo stuff, which I’m honestly not sure about. It doesn’t taste like any of the other non alcoholic beers. It’s kinda like actual beer watered down so much that you’d expect to receive it in a Reading nightclub as your “free drink in the ticket price” drink. It kinda makes me want to blow it out of my face in a thin fountain at the bar, only I can’t stand at the bar – I have to get it brought to the table. Plus, blowing it would be frowned on here in Covidworld. And yet… And yet I keep getting more of it. Maybe it’s not as bad as it is. Or maybe I’m a glutton for placebeers.

You walk in the door, sanitise and QR code. If you aren’t seen to be doing one or the other you’ll be asked to. Somebody just was. Then you sit and order through the internet, and your drinks come to the table. I’m just here to write my blog and I came here expecting peace and quiet. It’s a Monday night. I don’t think there’s even any football. Monday is the actor’s weekend, but there’s nothing happening in the Brighton theatres so it’s just a slow night in a slow time in a slow part of town. Despite the rain and wind I’m one of the only people in here and they just announced they’re closing early. Home.

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I’m back at Lou’s. Still the wind, so strong off the sea. I can hear the waves slamming in. And just to my left now, purring like a drill, the small furry reason I’m here tonight. He’ll keep me company as I have my first sleep in an actual bed for a few nights. I can’t wait for a soft sleep.

I’ve only been two nights away. I’m back home and my body feels exhausted. My brain feels wrung out. In a good way, sure, but I’m going to have to go to sleep soon.

It can be tiring, this acting business. I enjoy it, but I think every one of us was exhausted today after just one two show day. Admittedly we all stayed up until the small hours last night post show, talking and decompressing. But we’ve all been starved of that old familiar thing – being part of a company. We were reveling in it. Generosity together in front of an audience. No matter the size of the audience and the location, the cost is the same. And we wanted to decompress together. It’s part of the ritual.

In previous years we’ve been lucky enough to stay in a beautiful vast home, but this year with Covid we were scattered a bit more. Caravans and airstreams were provided by patrons of the theatre, but some were quite some distance away from unit base. Anticipating that it would be crowded and potentially awkward I just brought my tent, but I am just not as ordered right now as I sometimes can be. I forgot my inflatable mattress. I couldn’t even find my festival bag with all my little lights and comforts. So I just had a ground mat, my sleeping bag, a bunch of clothes and my mushroom knife. The nights were cold and noisy with hard rain. I slept in socks and trousers. Writing to you now I’m on my sofa and it feels like absolute luxury in comparison. Despite the long grass soft from constant rain, it was still hard in that field.

This morning, as with the showtimes, the Rain Gods were merciful. After a night of noisy deluge I was suncooked out of my tent in time to wipe it down with my T-Shirt and pack it up damp rather than soaking – a window in the rain that opened almost perfectly at the time it was needed. I absolutely have to remember to find a large open space and air the thing out in the next week or so before it turns into a horrible mouldy wreck. But at least it was just grass-damp this time. I once packed it up soaking and then forgot to air it for a year. That first night was horrible, and the poles never recovered. If only I had that house with a garden I drew for myself at school when I was five – I’d peg it out there on the next sunny day. But it’s vast, my tent. There’s nowhere I can air it round here where I wouldn’t be arrested. I’m not sure what the best thing to do is, really. Likely it’ll have to wait until I have my new wheels.

Scott drove me home. Nice to be a passenger for a change. He pointed out a hill near Abergavenny called The Blorenge. It’s taken me over four decades to find it, but finally there’s something for the next person who tells me there’s nothing that rhymes with “orange”.

Two shows done and all that adrenaline coursing through my veins. I’m not match fit. As always happens when it’s been a while since I played, I attacked so hard I exhausted myself. Nevertheless, an absolute joy to be back on stage – and to be back on that stage too. That living stage.

I don’t know how many years ago – maybe in the 80’s – Phil and Sue planted a theatre here. Such a wonderful vision. A living willow tree. A living stage. It is a little haven, and they love to bring things like this Dream to their audience. Two new players and lots of old friends and now here we are sitting round a table stacked with food in a little stone building close to that living stage where we just did two shows, talking as if we have all been close friends forever, despite me meeting two of these people yesterday. Not an official Factory show, so we could get away with being a bit loose. We had a huge amount of fun and tried to apply rigour where we could. I think we made two strange and lovely shows today. I’m surprised by how much it took it out of me. I’m tired. I’m happy. But I’m tired.

The conversation is about whether or not to do it again somewhere. “We’ve just found a show,” says Simon – and he’s right. This reduced squad with all the restrictions we’ve had building it – we even had one player coming on with the book after Kaffe had to self isolate at the last minute… But we found a clear mad telling of this well known play. And bigod we did it live together. I feel emotional about it now. I’m sad we will break up this little company – just as we’ve made it. But this is a long-standing friendship group, which has always had a flow of people joining and leaving. We’ve been training together and growing together for long enough. We part and we regroup in different shapes and forms throughout the years, flocking like birds through this strange and delightful profession. So many times now I’ve been part of a group like this, stepping into the unknown like we did, and doing it together – with each other, with the audience. This company has been at the heart of many of those happy groups and those happy bonkers memories.

I’m gonna rejoin this rare communal meal, this enthusiastic conversation between a group of people processing adrenaline. What a joy, once more. Tired. Happy. Tired.

Once again I’ve managed to end up in a beautiful place. In the wilds of Wales, with a small group of friends old and new. “Have you got everything you need?” I have just been asked by lovely Phil. This is The Willow Globe. A third of the size of the Globe in Southwark, a tiny theatre made from a living willow tree. It’s beautiful here. And yes, I have everything I need.

My tent is behind the theatre, in a deep field of long lush green grass and occasional molehills. I think I might have enough to be comfortable and warm tonight, so I’m winding towards sleep. We are all sitting in a circle – I’m slightly offset – and we are just quietly talking, enjoying each other’s company in the falling evening light here in this thin place.

I’ve been here many times before, with many plays. Often in hastily assembled companies. Often in this state of mind where I honestly haven’t a clue what is going to happen tomorrow but it doesn’t matter. This is The Factory, once again. My little changing crowd of lovely unusual actor friends who do things when we can, still. And love it when we do. There are new players here again. There are people I’ve just met today for the first time, and tomorrow we are going to do a play twice on a living stage and then go home.

It’s restricted this time. Wales is very strict. We won’t have many people in the audience and we have to be very careful about all sorts of contact and so forth. But the fact is, we are doing a play tomorrow. We are trying to apply as much personal rigour as possible to a great big load of unknowns. We are making a story together.

It’s usually Shakespeare here, although we did do The Odyssey one year. Given the circumstances, we picked the low hanging fruit this year. Dream. You have to work hard to fuck up Dream. It’s why it’s the staple of the school drama circuit. It just works. It’s familiar, strange, swift and fun.

Sitting in this circle of actors I’m remembering the fellowship that has kept me slugging so long. I’ve known some of these guys for 20 years and more. Hard to think it’s that long now. Where did the time go? Well – much of it went on just this sort of thing. Beautiful geeky things with beautiful geeky people in lovely places.

“You forget that we were all kids,” says one old friend, as he reminisces about his shared time at college back in the early noughties. “I haven’t touched a willy for ages,” says another. I’m just here, writing to you, thinking how rare it has been this year to just sit in a circle and talk about nothing in particular. It helps us ground into ourselves these sillinesses. I’m going to join in for a bit and then fall asleep in my field.

Back in 1984, Peter Hall directed a production of Cosi Fan Tutte at Glyndebourne. I was in the chamber choir at the time at my school. My soprano voice was yet to plummet to profundo. And our music teacher had connections. I was ten. I still remember it well though. Maybe it was a formative experience. I know that numbers were limited and I won my place. We lucky few went to Glyndebourne. And we went early for a workshop with the cast.

I know from work now that part of the job as an actor is to do workshops for … people. Evidently it was the same back then at Glyndebourne for the singers. Periodically the producer just drops it on you, wherever you might be in the run: “You don’t have to. But we kind of need two actors to do a workshop for…” Old people. Kids. Prisons. Local community. A fundraiser. A school. Blind people. School children. All of your above and more. “You don’t need to know anything more than you know. You’re not a teacher. It’s a masterclass.” I’m used to doing them now. I enjoy them now as they’re a handy frame to examine my craft. But they’re often divisive in the cast. Some actors just hate it.

Jane Berbie ran ours, with J Patrick Raftery. I’ve just googled them. I can’t remember much but I know it was Despina and the lover that sings “Cosi Fan Tutte”. I was ten. I can’t be expected to remember much more than that. I bonded with Ryland though. Even then I knew that performance was my work. He saw that too and encouraged me God help me. I didn’t go into opera though after my dropping balls took it off the table. I’ve had to make to with the less musical forms of performance that have been alternatively wonderful and hideous to me for decades.

Today I went back to Glyndebourne and watched the same opera, 37 years later aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Lou got tickets in a box through her work. No workshop first though. We got to sit in the gardens. We had a picnic.

What a beautiful place, and what delightful gardens. Very interesting to go back and realise that the baritone part Raftery mentored me in aged ten – (he got me to sing the Cosi Fan Tutte response) – that part would’ve been my part had I pursued the opera. The character lead. Good eye.

It’s a whole experience. They pick you up in a coach at Lewes. Then you have a picnic in the gorgeous grounds. Our picnic was entirely provided by Lou who knows the score by now having worked there on and off for ages in various capacities. In a sliding door, had I not lost understanding of my  dropped voice for 20 years, she might have been my dresser. As it is thankfully we had way more fun. We got to have a proper audience watchy experience worth quite a lot of money. It’s nice to see it from the other side. And she also helped me with my Bottom.

We lay there in the gaps drinking in the atmosphere and going through lines. I feel a lot better now having done them out loud a few times to somebody reading.

A wonderful chance to sit and watch these masterful singers work through a very light opera for the entertainment of surprisingly few human beings. It was something of an open dress, so hopefully not representative in terms of audience figures, although I know theatres are still mightily restricted with numbers despite football stadiums and Wimbledon etc etc ugh. It felt a true privilege to be one of the few. If I was rich and lived in Sussex I’d be there all the time. I’m sure I could write for ages about the difference between operatic movement and theatrical movement. But much as my geek brain has been exploding that topic, my heart just wants to say how lovely it was to go back to Glyndebourne a lifetime later and find out who I am now in that context.