Month: December 2021

It’s a two show day. We are on the office Christmas party circuit right now. They really know how to drink on this island. I’m sitting writing from Scrooge’s chair in between shows. It’s cold. But before long this room will be full of extremely merry people and Jack and I will be stretching the bounds of our energy to keep them from being sick onto each other.

Scrooge picks on an alcoholic in every show. I try to make sure everybody in the audience knows their name by the end of proceedings. It’s usually pretty easy to find someone, and in Jersey it’s even easier.

Last night it was Vicky. She was an easy pick. She had the day off the next day and it was her stated intention to get aa drunk as possible. Jack and I went home quickly after work last night. Vicky and her party stayed in the space getting more and more incomprehensible until the bar manager called time on them because one of them almost knocked over all the clean glasses on the way to the loo.

This morning, just before the matinee Jack suddenly noticed that our little joke puffin had been taken out of its belljar and replaced with a wine cooler. It’s not show crucial by any means. We like to have something ridiculous that Scrooge secretly loves. A few years ago it was a creepy stuffed partridge. This year it’s Oscar the Puffin. Anybody who grew up on his island and is similar to me in age will remember how the local ITV kids presenters had a toy puffin called Oscar. You could write and ask it to wink for you. Scrooge has it in a belljar. We can reference it in the show and then reincorporate and it makes another nice little moment. But it also calls attention to it. It brings it into the game.

Somebody drunkstole Oscar the Puffin last night. It was probably Vicky.

Jack and I became criminal investigators. “The belljar is fragile and unwieldy. The puffin was replaced with a wine cooler. The culprit is likely to have had accomplices in order to help with the switch. Also it stands to reason that the wine cooler was from the same table as the culprit, implying that the guilty party was drinking white wine or rosé – something requiring a cooler. They would have waited until most people were gone before attempting such a bold maneuver…” It was probably Vicky.

We were slightly spun out before the show as it felt like a safety thing and we started worrying about the security of our other props going forward. Was it malice, or just drunkenness? We worried for a short while. We sent an email. It was probably Vicky.

By the time the show was over, we had a deluge of emails from audience members. “We saw a certain merry group doing selfies with the puffin.” “We saw Goody Proctor doing witchcraft with the puffin.” “The puffin thieves were sitting in the chairs located exactly to the left as you come in.” “We know the name of the company the puffin thieves work for.” We knew everything about the puffin’s last few hours. This small island. You can’t even get drunk and kidnap a toy puffin without everybody dobbing you in. It was probably Vicky.

The puffin was guiltily returned to the car park during the matinee, with a foot broken off. Probably by Vicky. We found it in time for this evening’s show. Nothing lost but one show worth of gags and a bit of superglue. More flesh for the Scrooge’s puffin thing. We even contacted ITV Jersey and discovered that the original Oscar the Puffin still exists and is in the kitchen there.

It’s not gonna make us glue him to the set like they had to do in Punchdrunk.

I’ve been playing a game on my phone while we have been bedding in this show. It’s called “Bury me my love”. The phrase is one of great affection. I love you. I want you to outlive me.

It’s a game played out through fake text messages that come to your phone. The premise is that your Syrian wife Nour is leaving you in wartorn Homs in order to try to escape to the UK. She’s brought plenty of battery packs and has cashed in the life savings. She asks for advice and help and it tries to play out in an approximation of real time while you try to continue your life in Homs.

It’s written by a woman who made that journey, from Homs to London, and then spoke with many others with similar journeys. I first downloaded it a few years ago, and happily hit on a very optimistic ending on my first playthrough. I think it’s possible to end it badly…

I figured I was fortunate. Out of many possible endings it felt like a good one. I didn’t play through again until recently, when enough time has passed that I’ve forgotten the first playthrough. It doesn’t feel like a game made for entertainment, even though it is extremely compelling. It feels more like a game and an education simultaneously. The top review on Google after a quick search is snarkily written by some 24 year old called Oliver Roderick. It totally misses the point. Send him back to Fortnite and employ somebody with a backbone to review your games, switchplayer.

But yeah, so. First time I played it we got through fine, and she got off the bus somewhere in the suburbs of London and she seemed happy and felt safe and it all kind of worked. This time I’m deliberately giving her slightly sketchy advice, but nevertheless she’s made it as far as Lesbos by the skin of her teeth and thanks to the coastguard. It’s such a weird game. I like it because I suspect it is helping me deepen my understanding of something way out of my experience. Also there’s just something geeky and cute in the way it is written and in the way the characters communicate. Unlike poor soul-free computer game reviewer Oliver Roderick, I find it moving at times, and relatable. But also unlike him, I have had real relationships with real hew-mans.

It’s more of an interactive fiction than a game, sure. Your responses are limited. But I find it effective. Just before the show this evening I got a garbled call for help from Nour, with a GPS pin. My character tried to call the coastguard.

It’s worked out okay. She’s in Lesbos now. Meanwhile I was pretending to be Scrooge and dancing around like a tit.

It’s just midnight and I’m already in bed with a chamomile tea. Nour is asleep in the camp in Lesbos, Jack is asleep in his room over the corridor. Lou will be here on Sunday. I’m only just processing that for the next three days we have two shows and I’m in at half ten in the morning. I’ll be asleep shortly and having happy dreamtime. Humbug. Night night.

I’ve been trying to organise my life here around this very much all consuming show. I’ve got a spot of corporate training that I’m supposed to have helped with on zoom but it’s constantly having to be delayed. Good to be busy. But now we are open I want to make sure that dear dear old Carol doesn’t become the only thing. Jack and I are both obsessive enough that we habitually tweak as we go, throughout every run. This moment, that moment. Adjust. Sharpen…

We had the local Jersey papers in tonight. The Jersey Evening Post… My grandparents took it daily. I wish they’d been in tonight. Grandma would have been a nightmare of an audience member for us. But I would have been glad to make her proud in the context of this island…

It’s alright here. I’ve met a few people who could be friends. I’m slow with that sort of thing though… I’m still considering shifting back this way – to this island full of memories and ghosts. And this experience is making it possible.

The audience has been delightful so far, and it feels like an atmosphere I understand. There’s not much culture here right now so I’d want to come prepared to get stuck in to making things. We had the Jersey Arthouse in today, where I did that residency at the end of summer. They hadn’t made the connection that it was me. They are good people making interesting things on this island and they got stuck in. “Art materials!” they begged for, from an uncharitable Ebenezer at the start.

Let’s see what the local papers do. It’s an important one to a large extent. The Jersey Evening Post is the only Jersey Specific paper, and this place is far enough removed from the mainland that it is needed. There’s all sorts of stuff going on about fishing rights and storms and so forth. The weather has been terrible for the last few days, so the shelves in Waitrose were largely empty. If you subscribe to the JEP you at least know whether or not the boats are making it over. It’s a paper that has a good readership and gives news that no other uk papers are even really thinking about unless it suits them. If the JEP are positive we should sell the rest of the run. And much as I try to hold to the idea that theatre reviews are just one person’s opinion, I really hope that this good show is understood by this local paper, as there are ghosts here watching closely.

Uncle Peter. Peggy and Os. Mum…

Mother Mim, mum’s headmistress and her religious adviser. I would like to have told her about my Camino. Maybe, just maybe she’s still alive… I should look into that.

Anyway. We did a press night. And now I’m off to bed. And I took no photos as usual. Here’s some chains.

First night is done. An interesting bunch in the house. Three old bachelors in pride of place in the audience, connected to the venue. Maybe they own it? They were trying to work out how to balance the fact that this is low theatre and high theatre at the same time. Deliberate worldbreaks from them in the show and then pointed slightly snarky double meaning talk after until thankfully it turned out that one of them was genuinely friends with my uncle. They enjoyed it. Just … some people are worried about being seen to have fun if it’s not highbrow. Nobody who invests stock in being thought of as clever wants to be seen to enjoy something populist. And we are deliberately pitching our cleverballs low. The Dickens museum gave their seal of approval some years ago, as they understood that despite the craziness we are adhering very closely to the text. People who don’t know very much can sometimes worry that we haven’t done the work.

It was raucous, as ever. We are presiding over a party. This was a good, slightly gobby audience. This show was built in the North. It is MADE for people who don’t go to theatre very often if at all. You will be incorporated if we can do it. Honestly, the bulk of the lovely Jersey audience were there to have fun and as they did. The only weirdness came from those “special” people, and thankfully they knew my poor deceased uncle and allowed themselves to reframe. We had Spanish, Italian, Polish… We were full and it was clear. It landed. Phew. They mostly stayed after the show, as we always hope they will. We got to talk to them. There were some brilliant jokers. I got roundly hauled out for my scraggly beard.

And so. We are open. The days will start to shift. Until now I’ve been rehearsing in the day. Once we’ve ironed out the tech and details, it’ll be down to Jack and I to essentially monitor ourselves, tweak and rework moments as needed, and build towards the best version of this show that we can build towards for this lovely island. Before long we will get our days back and I can BE here.

Meantime I’m winding down. All that adrenaline. It’s half twelve and it feels like early evening. I’ll likely get used to it again before long. And I’m so happy to be back in performance LIVE. Fuck. About time. Oh hell. Truly about time. Here we go… Ebenezer Scrooge.

Here’s a rehearsal shot. I’m knackered.

Tech.

There’s more tech than we are used to.

This Christmas Carol has always been kinda low-fi, but it has also always responded to the people who are involved in making it. This year we have Adam as producer and director, and he’s a man who really knows his lights. I think he must own the little rig we have. Previous years have brought us the occasional birdie, maybe a fresnel, creative use of the house lights from time to time… Since we were at The Arts we haven’t had a rig even close to this one, and I can’t remember having the sort of lighting when I am comfortingly blinded and thus know that I’m in HD for the audience. It’s a lovely thing to have. But it means that the technical rehearsal is inevitably going to be long. There are things to plot. “LX is just plotting” is a familiar phrase for tech for big venues but I think this is the first time I’ve heard it for Carol.

We have built the show into a little outbuilding of L’Auberge du Nord. The northern inn. It’s up on the spine of the island, and they’ve been brilliant accommodating something perhaps quite unusual for the island. The Opera House has been shut down for two years. This place hasn’t had much theatre recently, and theatre in unusual spaces? Even less. They have a thriving am-dram scene, but this show has a high ticket price and doesn’t have your nephew in it. I reckon the remaining unsold tickets will go once we open. We sold well at the start but have slowed. By now everyone on the island knows somebody who is going in the first week. They’re waiting to hear it’s good and then there’ll be a feeding frenzy on the matinees.

The staff at the auberge practiced a service today. With Covid we aren’t using sharing platters. Everybody is plated up individually. It’s both simpler and more complicated. I think it’ll work well. It’s hard to tell until we’ve done it. I’m just going to let it pan out though because I’m just an actor in this when it comes down to it. All I can do is my bit and I know it works.

Sometimes in the past I’ve been involved in processes where people have pretended to be audience members so we can “practice” doing immersive theatre with them. I have never experienced anybody in those exercises who has ever behaved like real audience members. We can’t practice for the Jersey audience. All we can do is dress it, tech it and be ready.

It feels like we are ready. I’m curious. I honestly think that the reception and the nature of the audience we get will inform any decision I have pending about moving back here or not. Right now it’s just an idea I’m dandling with. If there’s stuff to be made and an audience for it … Game on.

A delightful day of nothing very much at all. Jack and I eventually left the house. The weather momentarily relented, showing us shafts of sun through dark clouds and hard wind. We jumped in the car and drove west to Corbière, that windswept lighthouse on the west coast of the island, banked into dramatic rocks and tides, pointing towards the sunset.

The wind was on the attack, blowing thick spume across the causeway. These huge sharp rocks that push up from the sea bed – the granite that makes up so many of the houses here – you need to go to edges to really see how this little island is just thrust up from the sea – just a huge protruding rock. We have seeded it with buildings while the wind seeded it with life. Strange things find shelter here and grow. Max and I found a dead egret in the rocks here once. If it had lived a bit longer, and a companion had blown here, we would have egrets. As it is we still have lots of strange fauna, lots of unusual flora, dumped here by the wind and the gulf stream.

We had a few hours before the tide shut us off to wander the rocks near Corbière. We crossed to the lighthouse. “The automatic tide siren is broken,” it tells us, and I know how easy it is in Jersey to underestimate the speed of the tide. Not wanting to have to spend the night trying to break into one of the lighthouse sheds as the sea ripped around us, we came back to the landward side of the causeway reasonably quickly. “Actors playing Scrooge and Marley in Jersey Christmas Carol forced to spend a night in the lighthouse,” is not the first coverage I want to see in the Jersey Evening Post. We returned home enervated from the buffeting wind and ready to cook a communal meal.

This is the last evening we will get that isn’t a Monday, until Christmas. Work is about to switch on hard. I’m so glad of it too. It’s what I signed up for, all those years ago when I auditioned for drama school. Hard work doing pretendy things. I slammed a jacket on and recorded a self tape on the return from the lighthouse. Scrooge doesn’t care about grooming so I am looking a little wilder than the part I was reading for. Let’s see where it falls.

This evening we made a roast. Chicken with most of the trimmings. Lots of veg. We lit the woodburner again. And we cosied up together, Jack and I, in the IKEA flat. It’s always been a good working and playing relationship, the two of us. We have another month and we are about to hit the run, when the nature of the day changes.

Tech tomorrow. Then we open on Tuesday. It’s not midnight yet and I’m in bed. Goodnight.

Weekend. Hurrah!

Man it’s great to be back at work. This has been a delightful week, but I’m glad I can shut down now for a moment. A remarkably snug quilted dressing gown has been posted to Jersey from The National Theatre costume hire, and I wore it for the first time this morning for the run. Considering that for six years I’ve worn polyester, I’m thrilled to have something nicer. I grew attached to the polyester gown, but it frequently led to worldbreaks – “Tell us about your dressing gown, Ebenezer!” I was very comfortable in it today, but put 80 people full of alcohol into that little room and I might be boiling gently by the middle of Christmas Past. We will see. We ran it earlier than I think we have ever run it. We started at half nine. It’s feeling complete now, and most of the questions are to do with things that will only become apparent with an audience. We had sponge cake and were broken by noon.

I went to the optician for contact lenses. Alain Duchemin, affectionately pronounced “doucheman” by the locals. His practice is directly over the road from where I was born. I figured he was the best option for things I’ll be shoving into my eye. I lost my trust in contact lenses after I had a terrible eye infection for over a year. I’m looking back that way again, as my career is waking up. I’ll need to be able to see without glasses again. Doucheman did plenty of tests, and it seems like my ocular health is holding out reasonably well. Hopefully I’ll get some toric lenses by the middle of the first week of shows. Blind Scrooge is comforting but loses specificity.

Post optician, Jack and I went home to the IKEA flat and we lit the woodburner for the first time. Now we are cocooned together, assisted by crispy duck pancakes and way too many logs, enjoying another Liverpool game which I think will become a fixture of our time living together.

I’m so looking forward to a quiet sleepy day of very little tomorrow. I want to get out a little bit with Jack and show him parts of the island. But the wind is buffeting the windows, the rain is in hard hard squall. Not going anywhere is the order of the evening…

Tomorrow is the weekend and we have the earliest start yet. This is partly my fault for booking a contact lens appointment at half noon on a Saturday. We have to start the run early. But … I’m running towards the end of my useful string. I’m tired. Happy, but tired.

My accordion was playing up so I had to get Max to post my travel accordion to me. He also posted my passport and my spare glasses. They arrived this morning, and actually it’s a lovely thing to have that little red travel instrument here with me. It’s smaller, quieter and shriller, but much less temperamental. I took it around America. I love it and know it, and can come and noodle on it and not worry that one of the stops will jam. I should have brought it with me really. Props to Max for sending it over so quickly. It’ll take over from the great big old Hohner.

I’ve also got my new passport. Blue again. Meh. SOVRENTEY. And a pair of glasses I’ve been ignoring forever because the prescription is not conducive to my needs. Specsavers. You get what you pay for. “I don’t need to see super long distance if it makes it harder to sight-read. I need to be able to do both.” “Duuuuuuhhh what? I just go down this list.” Still, better than my current specs where the lenses fall out every few hours. I’m wearing them as I write and I can mostly see what I’m writing.

It’s half nine. All the shops in Jersey are shut and we’ve run out of wine. Even though it’s a Friday night, it feels like its coming to time to wind down. This is for the best. The rain is beating down, and despite the inclement weather Jack has been googling for potential late night booze shops in walking distance.

I’m looking forward to Sunday. All I have to do is a self tape, but it’s for a casting director that used to use me back in the day. I haven’t sent anything for them in something like a decade. I’m so happy to reignite that relationship. It felt fruitful back then but was suddenly damaged by miscommunication. It has always felt like a bruise. I’m so thrilled to have the opportunity to send something to them. It’ll have to be in my improvised digs IKEA home studio. This is a still from my tape last night… It’s the only photo I can muster in my current state, which is basically just totally knackered. Onwards to Sunday! I’m having a lovely time. I’m knackered.

“Do you open tonight? Merde!”

This from a dear friend who has produced earlier runs of this show, and yes… in the past we have opened on the first Thursday… This time though we have the luxury of a little more time. We can dig into moments more. But now we are also starting to organise seating, and inevitably my brain is going towards sightlines. I’ve got this big impressive looking chair, but if I sit in it I massively lose status as I become invisible to a portion of the audience. It’s not my job as an actor to even think about such things, but Jack and I have a certain degree of creative ownership on this now, and a strong understanding of how easy it is to break the tender moments if one of us is invisible. The bombast can survive the apocalypse. But there’s tenderness in this piece, and I’m worried about some moments in terms of sightlines. Let’s see though. We have more time than we’ve ever had to find this fresh. The audience finishes the company. Every space we have ever done this in has given us unexpected presents and unexpected problems. The show is robust, and I’ve remembered quite how robust the partnership is between Jack and I. We get on. We squabble. We finish each other’s sentences. We know each other very well both on and off stage. I sometimes forget how powerful a partnership it is with us now though. There’s trust there. And we won’t let each other fall in a hole. And we care about making this a good show.

Right now though, this week, building the show again has been so all consuming that it’s hard to write a blog that isn’t just me thinking about work. I am usually just full of the day’s nuance at the end of the day. Today my head is on sightlines, yesterday my head was on dialogue, tomorrow who knows?

We still haven’t had much chance to explore the island. We cut up through the middle every morning, and back down in the evening. We sleep near the udders. We work on its back.

The whole journey takes about 15 minutes and you don’t get much in the way of scenery. We arrive at the inn, we work until it’s dark, and then we go home, maybe via a shop. All the bits we experience are the crowded parts. This island can feel extremely crowded. This island IS extremely crowded. I was fortunate to live with a big garden when I was here. Space is at a premium. I had no idea how lucky I was. But I’m looking forward to being able to finally show Jack why I love this place enough to be considering moving back. It’s not ALL about rich people and stone walls. And this year has really helped me see that. First the residency, and now the extended Christmas Carol family for this year. I’m looking forward to seeing what the audience is like here. That’ll be the clincher…

It’s gonna be glorious I’m sure. But thank God we don’t open until Tuesday. I am enjoying the chance to really explode some of the moments we haven’t had time to explore in the past.

Jack’s a Liverpool fan. To a lesser extent I suppose I am as well, with The Isle of Man making them my nearest geographical connection back in the Hillsborough days. This evening, after rehearsal, we knew that we would be settling in to watch a Merseyside Derby. Liverpool vs Everton.

First of all we diverted to St Helier. Jack was after vape juice. I figured the best place to seek it was the mean streets of St Helier. It’s a jungle out there. We even saw a drunk person talking slightly louder than normal.

We tried multiple shops and Jack seems happy having found some sort of watermelon vapor bubblegum horror. He’s hoovering it down now as we watch the closing minutes of a match that is now unassailable. We are here again in chateau IKEA, doing lad things.

But… I like this Liverpool team. Mo Salah is working wonders for disarming incomprehension driven hatred of Muslims in Liverpool. He plays incredible football and frequently takes a moment to thank Allah after a goal. Also these rich boys seem to like each other and they play well together. Yes of course they’re overpaid, but it’s always good to see people playing well together for a job.

The football is over. And we are busting out the script in our evening. Workaholics… We are looking at things we need to rethink in the very different context of this venue and this team. Fifteen years of working together, we’ve had. Fifteen strange and lovely years. Outside of our foray into St Helier this evening we haven’t had time to see the island yet. Normally by now I’d have gone to my old standards – I’d have walked a few beaches, in the South and in the West. I’d have stood above Corbière, and I’ve have clambered on the rocks around Green Island.

None of that yet. We’ve been busy. We’ve been making a lovely thing. The first of these Instagram things is up now. More to follow…

I’m exhausted. It’s good to be back at work. I’d forgotten how 3D this business of making theatre is, and how consuming it can be. We have to get up at a reasonable time tomorrow, and it’s already gone midnight. I’ve got two self tapes to submit by the end of the weekend. But I’m happy. Just thrilled to be back at the craft.