Month: December 2023

First week done.

When I saw the schedule for this I jumped out of my skin. I told my agent at the time I didn’t particularly want to have to do it. I was looking at the next few weeks. The lack of rest.

Now it’s my job and I’m contracted and frankly I love it and I’ll pull it off. But… tomorrow will be my last day off until Christmas. Here we go!!

It’s a huge team over at The Freedom Church. The bit of me that was almost a vicar loves the fact we are in a space run by evangelicals. It used to be a cinema. Now the Nicky Gumbell lot are here. I feel right at home in both experiences, even if nowadays my feet would probably turn the grass black in The Vatican.

With Jack having switched to production and an employed actor playing Marley, I have found myself unusually separate from the production aspect.

In Sheffield, Jack and I were deposited in a huge empty space with a bar manager. We found some flats. Over the rehearsal period we built a set with whatever the fuck we could find. One wall was entirely debt board. We ran it for the first time about an hour before the house opened on the first night.

In Bishopsgate Jack and I were freezing to death with Anna-Fleur, worrying about rats and dogpoo. We weren’t alone building the set but we still did it, mostly in the literal actual dark. I laid the vinyl floor for the kitchen and then we built what we could. We had one floodlight to work with. We had to take off and then replace huge window shutters every night. The portaloos filled up the first night and we had to plunge them while the audience was coming in.

At The Arts I stood in the dark in freshly spilt red paint just before the show, unkowing. “Sticky floor…” After Jack went on and was already talking, India and I realised that it was paint. We ran a superquick workaround in about 2 minutes involving tissues, stripping and panic. I went on with no shoes on and with just a tiny red spot on one of the hats. The hat is still part of the show. The red spot is still visible. It still makes my heart turn over.

Previous years I’ve always been part of production too without really realising it isn’t my responsibility. I’ve been doing build and break, I’ve been thinking about seating and organising the room every night to fit the numbers. I’ve been working around it when it is clear there are more sold than can be sat. Jack and I have always made it work.

This year, Jack is pure production and I’m pure actor. Nevertheless my only pair of longjohns, which have never fit anyway, finally split this evening. I’ll be the one replacing them and invoicing. I used to have to do my own laundry, but stage management have taken that this year. I find that I don’t trust it like I trust myself, but I’ve got no choice as I’m not in digs with a washing machine. Jack and I used to take it in turns to take it home if we weren’t sharing.

This show will always be a team effort. It is unusual being much purer in my “actor” role than usual. I’m glad I’m still overlapping other jobs though. After all, it’s Christmas Carol.

Another late night. I’m in my Premier Inn room, but the staff have caught on that I’m Scrooge. I think some audience members dobbed me in last night. Now they all know so I have to be on best behaviour. No more getting my room turned over when it’s a pants explosion. I’ve got a reputation to uphold.

The majority of people I’m coming across this run are delightful. We are running a bar here though, and the show always goes up late simply because the bar is open as long as possible. Plus this is Jersey. There’s fuck all happening. As a result we frequently have audience members getting smashed during the show. Tonight we had one guy who was very hard to shut up. I had to employ the old teacher trick of giving him a solo voice for a while and then congratulating him. I let him sing a solo bit and told him how tuneful he was. I did it cos I needed him to shut his cakehole in Yet To Come when the fourth wall drops like a portcullis and I can’t do anything to affect the audience outside of delivery.

Lou is on the debt board. In fact, any of you who I know personally and who read this blog – you are all probably on it. Someone tried to get Lou forgiven this evening but it didn’t pass muster, so Osbert Tits was forgiven instead the little wuss. He runs a bird sanctuary. The rest of you, I’ll let you know when / if you get off.

Two more shows tomorrow.

This has always been about coralling hammered people. Now I’m in a room with 200 of them and I’m insulting them. I sometimes have a moment where I really understand how lucky the few idiots running the world are that the majority of people don’t just tear them apart.

I went down a Campbell hole with Will this evening. I was talking about king sacrifice, and trying to reference this passage:

I kinda wish the leaders we tolerate still knew this was the end of their time in charge.

I’m happy to be high status in a silly drunk room though. And Will is a delight to work with even if he reminds me of me.

Oh lord.

Two shows tomorrow. Press night just done. I’m in at half ten. I expect I’ll wake up and l go straight to the venue via coffee.

My parking permit blew out of the car a few days ago. We stopped at Corbiere and the wind almost took the door off its hinges. When I got back to St Helier it wasn’t on the dashboard. £156 quid down the pan. Lou said I shouldn’t write it off. I couldn’t see how a permit that can’t be recognised would be replaced.

I paid for parking the last few days as I just didn’t have time to go to Sand Street for a new permit.

Today I went to Sand Street. I said “I expect there’s nothing you can do, but my permit blew out the door at Corbiere a few days ago.” “Oh. That one!” And next thing I know I’ve got a familiar looking permit that has clearly been totally soaked. Only in Jersey. I’m glad I didn’t replace it immediately. Someone handed it in. Thank you someone.

Press night. Normally that’s a stressful thing but I’m over getting stressed now. Especially with this show. It’s fun. It’s meant to be fun. If you fail to have fun then there’s very little we can do for you. No show exists for this long if it doesn’t work. And the utter delight is how it shifts every year, it just keeps morphing and growing and spiking out new shoots of mad joy. It’s a delight to be in, and the smiles we get are contagious.

I’m home in my purple room. It’s 1am. I had Jack Daniels. Brian was here for a flying visit. Damn it has been a lovely day but with 2 shows tomorrow and booze in my veins, all I want to do now is lie prone for 8 hours and then run and do laundry before the first show starts.

The call literally just came through. 1:02am. And yes it’s 10.30. Doors open at noon. Technically the half should be 11:20. I’m surprised these calls are so early. Normally I’m in the venue an hour before the call if I can be, so with this stage management they are making the call my habitual arrival time without even knowing it.

But I’m gonna put myself down now so I can dream out all the press night Jack Daniels.

I asked Jack for a photo. He sent me none.

We are working in the old St Helier Odeon. We’re downstairs. But this evening we went and had a look at the old screening room. It was cut in half in the eighties. But the first decade of my life it was a huge screen. I went to Fantasia there. I think that was my first cinema trip. All the early Disneys of my life were just above where I am humbugging. I saw Octopussy there on the huge screen too, just before they chopped it in half.

This evening as every evening we had a varied bunch in the audience. It was a really lovely show. After the show we went up and looked at the old screening room. It has been stripped back. It was full of asbestos. Now, I’m told, it has been signed off as safe.

Cinema was a big treat when I was growing up on this island. One time, Max dobbed me in to my mum that I had been reading books under my sheets after lights out with a torch. It felt like the most arbitrary thing… I was 7. I had asked him for a battery. He gave me a battery and then ratted me out, and my punishment was inexplicably harsh. Everyone but me went to see the new Disney. I had to stay at home with the babysitter. It took a little over a decade before I finally saw The Fox and the Hound and overcame part of the trauma at 18. All I had done back then was ask a trusted older brother for some fucking torch batteries.

He later insisted that he was “worried about my eyesight.” Rat. Maybe I damaged my eyesight reading under the covers. Maybe. But maybe that’s a conversation a brother can have with a brother. Looking at it I’m still angry with him, and I was 7!!?! Max ain’t good at that stuff though. So yeah, I stood there this evening in the very Odeon screening room where by all rights I should have sat with my family enjoying a mediocre Disney film if my brother hadn’t inexplicably dobbed me in for reading books with a torch. Mum overreacted. Max never should have ratted on me. I only asked him for the batteries because I wanted him to know I was doing it cos I thought I was being clever and cool so actually I bear as much blame as weird brother and arbirary parent. Mum probably thought the film was too grown up for me and was looking for an excuse.

I literally couldn’t believe it though when mum went good on her punishment and they all fucked off to the cinema without me. It was a long night at home. I remember it. I was so angry and sad. To be taken out of a cinema trip because you asked your brother for a battery? In retrospect it was one of the very early moments where I learnt that we are basically all alone in this nonsense. Trusting other people can be messy.

Mum was mostly excellent at mumming. That whole situation was rare bullshit. Max couldn’t have known what would happen and he had been conditioned to believe that we could damage our eyesight reading under the covers by our dad who valued eyesight hugely for his speedsports, and had to wear glasses and blamed similar behaviour. Mum probably worried I was too young for the film and caused me more trauma trying to protect me from Bambi’s mum than if she’d just taken the risk and let me go. In retrospect I think she was looking for an opportunity to protect me from the film, and found one without thinking about what connections I might make about it.

I didn’t stay long in the screening room tonight. It’s all stripped back now. All these ghosts started shouting at me. Dead. dead. dead. Grandpa and I used to go see films there. Dad and I. Ghosts.

I’ll stay working downstairs processing old trauma and throwing out charisma. There’s plenty of dad in Ebenezer… But I’m very curious to realise that walking into that space woke up weird ancient unfairness from when I was literally 7 years old. And I remember it with such forensic clarity.

To his credit, Max spent ages trying to tell me the movie, to reconstruct it, to build it with toys. Seven… I am amazed to encounter such odd feelings carried over from such an early age.

Nice to be in a place where I used to consume culture, but to be generating culture. I’ve moved on from that Disney kid. But I’m happy to look at those feelings and consider them now. Even though I didn’t do well at staying in that screening room.

“How the hell have we not met before?”

After Al Wright texted Will this evening, having seen the social media and realised his old friend was in the show he made up with Tom Bellerby just after Jack and I had done As You Like It with him up at Sprite…

Work breeds work. I can track it being me in Christmas Carol back to a tiny production of Private Lives in Norfolk over twenty years ago. Will is twelve years younger than me. So we are both Chinese year of the tiger. We are also both spongebrains, to the extent that I checked with him about the eidetic thing I’ve started to learn about myself. We both see the wordshape and associate based on that. The name Brad lives in the same place as the name Carl. Keira and Freya can be easily mistaken. Shapes of words can easily outmemory specifics. We both lift lines up. We both collect esoteric knowledge. The joy is that we have gone down different rabbit holes with these weird collecting brains and there is so much wonderful random stuff to be found. We are enjoying surprising one another with the crap we’ve picked up. I’m having to be careful though in these early days during the show, as we can both talk endless waffle when people aren’t paying for it, or when they are. We enjoy it. Audiences might not. I literally had to say “NO” to him in the show tonight when I was telling everyone how the Slovakians say “Merry Christmas,” and even if I knew I could go all night repeating it I wasn’t sure if the paying audience had the patience. He pimped me 3 times running. The fourth time I had to refuse.

But I fucking love him, this fire tiger burning next to my wood tiger, my jaguar. I can bring him to a clearing where he won’t hurt the trees. There we will bring the light and the darkness together and it’ll be fucking spectacular. Because we are both motivated by the quest for joy. I love how much sense it made when we were both tigers. My Chinese “wood tiger” horoscope has always made sense to me, since I discovered it after my first medicine experience drew me to “jaguar”. Yeah woo woo etc. But things like that can be helpful if not relied on. Here we both are, and Brad who is SM and just 21.

Oh heavens. We open tomorrow.

There’s still only two of us on stage. But it’ll feel like a village. Will and I both make a lot of noise both physically and vocally. We do it differently but we come from similar drives. It makes for a lovely partnership. And now there’s puppets and loads of tech. Six years ago I was sticking and lighting hundreds of candles every night. I was crawling under a table trying to rewire a surround sound system that people kept kicking out of connection. I’d be in the venue at least three hours early to help with tablecloths and reset. I can barely remember some of the fuckery but there’s been so much. Plunging portaloos with broom handles, taking the fucking shutters off, the RED PAINT, the Prophet of Zarquon… I think there must be a decent record in this blog now even if not complete. Maybe I should start sifting over old posts. No time for that now though… I remember building a set with Jack and Sam in two days using whatever the fuck was lying around in Theatre Deli Sheffield. We made it look pretty damn good. We literally stole some wallpaper from a major business in the process, and put up a load of flats we found in the attic backwards so we could paint them up and use the structure as shelves.

Now it looks great. It sometimes feels like I’m in a West End show, with all the tech in place, so well lit, it all looks brilliant and I’m being paid properly. Hoorah.

Longass day tomorrow though. The inevitable thing happened where they forgot how much space real people take up, so we can’t have Yet to Come in the audience anymore. It’ll be spookier from stage anyway. It’s huge. But it means we have to tech and then fuck around doing rehearsal things instead of getting show ready. So be it.

I’m thinking of Sheffield where Sam and Jack and I built the whole fucking show and literally didn’t even run the lines until about two hours before the first full house cus we were too busy building. And it was still a wonderful December and the show is robust. There’s been enough rearrangement this year that it could be honestly argued it was a different fish entirely.

I’m really forward to this month. But tomorrow is gonna be long. So I guess I should stop thinking about the past and clock off.

Ahhhh tech. The long slow rehearsal where the focus isn’t on you. It’s looking ace and now I’ve got all the noise out of my head around the shared history and so forth I’m really remembering what a delight it all is. There’s plenty of tech compared to most other versions. Still some bits that might need to be solved live but there’s never been a version of this show where we haven’t kept tinkering. It’s why it’s still alive after all these years. 9 years with me now. And we’ve finally got all three spirits into it.

It’s half eleven and I’m finally home in my room. I didn’t ask them to, but they turned my room over, which leaves me feeling a mixture of emotions. We open on Wednesday and I’ve been ill. My bedroom is an agony of tissues, with unwashed socks and pants draped artfully about the place. I expect they were after the pint glasses that I had smuggled up from the bar last night so I could have a bath and a couple of pints at the same time. Multitasking. I would never have knowingly invited a stranger in to clean up my mess. Still it’s nice to have clean sheets.

Back at home the plumbing is exploding again. The loo is profoundly blocked and has been for almost a week. Frank has been diligently plunging to no avail. I put it out to tender today and some guy did exactly what I hate about living in Chelsea. He came having been told that a plunger didn’t work. He didn’t bring a chain or a snake. He just sucked his teeth and told me he’d have to take the loo off the wall and it’ll be another £350 on top of the £95 he has already charged me. When I told him no, he dropped it to £320 like he was giving me candy, and when I still told him no he raised it again to £350. It’s the Chelsea Tax. I’m surprised he didn’t offer to replace the taps, or to change the loo to a new one.

I’m likely overly careful. I’ve had some really shit experiences. The boiler guy who took out my immersion without my wanting him to and charged me for him to drive it off and sell it. The windows guys who nicked my window weights (and then a drunk friend for cutting the ropes on two of my windows making them basically unusable in the process of ascertaining that the weights had been nicked. Armies of boiler engineers. Team Know-how and the Christmas oven fifty year old mouse dropping debacle that caused me 4 months of pain in my shoulder.

I just wish that everything could be working fine and maybe if I had thrown money at that guy it would have been, but people like that are not averse to inventing another issue next and keeping the joint dripping until there’s nothing left. I’m not spending my entire Christmas wage on him when if I was in London I’d probably be able to clingfilm my arm over marigolds and stick it all the way down until I got the fucker in my hands. I can’t ask Frank to do that. But I reckon a good chain would get it. It’s cat litter in the u-bend that’s picked up whatever else went down there. If you can’t get it with your hand you might get it with a chain… Although I guess it hasn’t been taken off the wall for 200 years. Maybe there’s Viking Treasure in the u-bend too. Might be worth doing. I just can’t fucking countenance how much they want for it.

While I was on the phone sorting this out in my dinner break and swearing freely I got the evillest look I’ve had for a long time from the woman alone at the table next to me. I think it was a combo of Jersey things.

Mobile phone. (They shouldn’t exist) Swearing. (What would jesus think?) Arguing about money (we should just pretend it doesn’t exist cos we have it all.)

If they had known that I was also on the phone to a trans man they would likely have exploded.

Hey ho. Lots to do. Life is good. Let’s get this show on the road and I’ll find an honest plumber tomorrow I’m sure. I’m told they do exist. In the 1700’s people would sell maps to “El Honest plumber”. I still believe. I believe!! I do!

From early childhood in Jersey I’ve kind of known I was lucky to have Gerald Durrell’s Captive Breeding Programme on the island, but it wasn’t until I went to the horrors of inner city zoos on the mainland that I realised the extent to which that place does things differently. Their focus has always been on the wild populations, on campaigning to educate people and preserve habitats, on reintroducing and bolstering numbers in the wild. Some of their resident creatures have come from less thoughtful zoos, and wouldn’t last in the wild anymore. They have a good quality of life here. And maybe the huge ancient reality of these few captive creatures, coupled with the wealth of information on boards about what we are doing to them in the wild… maybe it’ll help inspire more Durrels to find more ways to turn populations around.

Max is a natural scientist, and was so when he was 8, so I’ve always had that direct line to the natural world. Coming to the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust as a child, helped my compassion and my geography. Even at ten I could show you obscure islands near Mauritius on a map with greater ease than states in America. A BBC Radio Jersey presenter was talking about Sumatran rhinos the other day and was rhyming “Sumatran” with “boomerang” instead of “apartment”. I wondered how she could do that living on this island. I knew where Sumatra was before I knew where New Zealand was.

It also helped me start to see early how we are wiping other species out, and how it is often preventable. The dodo is the symbol of the place, because they were friendly creatures and we quickly wiped them out. We didn’t really know it. I’m sure we thought they were infinite. Someone ate the last Dodo without a clue it was the last. Now we will never see another. Maybe it’s a mercy… Christmas Dodo, battery Dodo etc…

They’ve restocked a great deal of endangered creatures since I was a kid. Others it is a losing battle with habitat destruction for agriculture and violent poaching working together. But for now, the pink pigeons, the aye-ayes, ring tailed lemurs, Rodrigues fruitbats… strange and varied success stories. We are so ignorant though as a species that for every conservationist there are three people saying “But they eat the crops,” or whatever. “They steal babies,” “Why are they more important than us?” etc

Gerald died decades ago now, but his legacy is very much alive and many species too because of it. Mostly we know him from his nostalgic childhood memories on Corfu, televised frequently with My Family and Other Animals. I was happy to share this “zoo” with Will and his family. They got it. We had a lovely day. And saw some incredible creatures.

Remarkable. A good night’s sleep and I’m still feeling like I’m fighting Death but subtly it feels like I’m winning. Last night I was fever-sweating into my sheets. This morning I was having to say exactly what has been written into a substitute script over moments that will necessarily be semi improvised. Apparently all I’m allowed to say for a two minute part of the script is “Really?” “Bob Cratchett?” “Yes.” The uninitiated might believe that in a two handed play, one of the actors has rewritten the script and made it a precious monologue with occasional unwelcome interruptions. The old tale of the servant in the Shakespeare play. “What’s the play about?” “Well, this fellow has to tell the king that his wife is dead.” A two hander Scrooge and Marley, written from the point of view of Marley. Even five years ago he wanted to call it “Marley’s Feast”. Does he not see that the bits where I undercut him were so I had a voice too and could deal with the audience? There’s fucktons of audience this year. Does he think he was always the only one?

I’m happy to serve ego if it serves the play, always. But… I think this overall piece will suffer as Ebbies voice will have no power with the audience if I let him pull my teeth entirely before it becomes relevant. Still, it’ll make my work less to be toothless, so I’m not gonna fight it too hard. With all the extra bums it might be lovely just to switch out… I just wish our new writer was the one who has to experience the rod he’s making for the back of the actor playing Marley by making Scrooge mister Ebenezer chocolate box.

The truth is, I’ll keep working and we will dig it from this insecurity egohole bollocks. Basically the script is a slight rearrangement but I think it needs to be styled as a total rejig for financial reasons. I’m just… getting annoyed cos there’s bits he’s scripted from what we mutually arrived at in years gone by and he’s being precious about our shared improv. He’s writted the things down so they is himses now. Hooray but boo. We took our time to arrive at them and then today he just wants me to serve monologues. Really? Yes! Ooh! Bob Cratchett? Gosh! Tell me more!

Truth be told they still came from his hallowed brainhole fresh and panting, new and shiny; WHO IS THIS BARCLAY INTERFERING WITH THE NEW THING GENIUS? NO, LIES I SAY! I AM THE LAPTOP MAN AND YOU ARE NOTHING BUT THE NOISEMAKER!

They didn’t come from his brainhole. Every night, every day we worked it through together. We built and rebuilt and thought and thought, night after night for years. He’s just swapped hats and written these half remembered things, mostly with his own part in mind.

…

Humbug.

This is why I continue to avoid doing production you see. Good on him for making it happen. But … Christ. Creatively and fiscally, ooh he’s a squeezing hand at the grindstone. Not just is he forgetting that we made this up together, not just has he totally restyled it and cut all the bits that gave my character power over his, but fiscally? Humbug humbug humbug.

No per diems and I’m in a hotel burning money on food. Not even breakfast. Apparently “the venue might let me use the kitchen when we’re open.”. Little filming spots before and during rehearsal with no remuneration. Squeeze squeeze squeeze. Life imitating art. Ebenezer. There he is. He’ll end up in the show…

*This blog is a work of fiction etc* Sometimes it’s therapy to put these things out. Nothing is definite. Existence is change. etc. But…

“Everybody has got this cold at the moment,” says the pharmacist when I go to buy lemsip. “The worst days are the second and third. Then it eases off.”

Tomorrow is day 3 and I’m rehearsing. But then Sunday is a day off so I can recover. Dammit though I only just got sick at Halloween. I’m normally a one cold a year type guy.

Still, better by far to have it now than a week from now. I woke in a fever dream at about half 4 and there was no sleep to be had from there. By the time I got into rehearsal I wished I was dead. By the time it was over I didn’t have to wish anymore.

Someone has forced marshmallows into my skull.

I don’t want to do anything.

Sometimes I’m too hot sometimes I’m too cold.

It’s half six. I’m gonna have a bath and then just see if lying on my back and shivering leads to some sort of sleeplike experience. We can but hope. If you’ve tried to get in touch with me recently you would have failed. Sorry about that. This is manflu, and I’m unmanned by it.

Thank God I’ve played most of this part before. Learning lines on top of feeling like death … no thank you.

It’s gonna be nice this year though, for sure. Lots of fun tech stuff, and I’m growing very fond of this new actor playing Marley, Will. He has similar propensities for the accumulation of totally useless knowledge. I found myself testing the mic with Vogon poetry, and he joined in. We are a right pair of geeks all said.

Right now though, I can barely think beyond how rank I feel, so I’m gonna hit the hay as soon as this lemsip is drinking temperature, and I’m gonna pray that tomorrow I’m over the worst of this…

—

Didn’t even publish this. Feeling.a bit better this morning for the rest. Hopefully now it’ll be clearer.