AlBarclay

I’m in bed. It’s barely half past nine. Normally at about now I’d be appalled at the shower of shit in Cyprus. “We are gonna lose this island to the Turks,” I’d be thinking.  I’ll give the heavy lifting to Gratiano, three corpses to dispose of and all that. I’ll make sure Iago is nine years a’killing. And I’ll fuck off home to tell Dukey what I’ve arbitrated before I go back to Constantinople and my brother the Emperor, if he can be fucked to listen which he won’t be.

Cyprus was only held by the Republic of Venice for a short time. This play details the end of that short time, and concludes with my character installing an injured governor who is a bad drunk. He speaks last which is my only true signal that he’s higher status than the Duke. But he must be. It needn’t matter though. I just need to show up and speak. It’s a lovely part to play even if I have to really keep myself warm and alert longer than any other character, so it’s normally a really late night by the time I’ve eaten my adrenaline.

I sent a self tape today. A Paxman type, but in the seventies so hopefully the beard will fly. Ally did it with me in exchange for a bathroom door handle. I didn’t want to spend too much time on it, really so we just did it and then sent it. It’s one line. I’ll either get it or I won’t and the decision will be about the cut of my jib and not the nuance of my delivery.

I’m happy to seed things into the future. One line in a thing? Yep, sure. That’s an easy tape, and the casting director is good enough that it won’t be a flood of options. It’s mine to lose, largely. Fingers crossed my tired but willing involvement will be enough because these relationships are at the heart of everything we do.

I’ve been slow writing this blog as it is interspersed with messages on WhatsApp. It’s ten. I’m seriously thinking of putting myself into torpor before I would normally put out my final couplet, and try and serve up the word “relate” like it is the beginning of a whole load more. Bed bed bed. I’ll go turn off the heating. I had a really gorgeous expensive dinner courtesy of Lambs of Sheep Street. I’m feeling warm, full, happy and excited. Three more weeks, and it can only continue to deepen with such a company. So much to look forward to.

1:08am. I just heated and consumed a vast bowl of pasta with pesto and cheese. Easy as pie, tasty and bulky. I can’t go straight to sleep though or I’ll be back at dreamwar. I’ve switched the heating off so it’ll be cooler soon and I’ve opened the bottle of port my agent sent me for press night. A digestif, a bit of cold air, and then a cup of camomile. I’ll go to bed at 2 I reckon, and the cold air always makes for less involved dreams. It’s been a full week both in life and out of it. The dreams have been a little too vigorous. In the matinee today I saw two of everyone. One company member took two shows off for Black Dog. This dark time of year, and even though the company is BRIGHT we are still raked by the claws of Skadi. It’s hard not to notice the early dark.

If you know me you will know how I sometimes just forget to eat. I had a bad patch of it just now where I had nothing but a small bowl of lentil soup in two days and didn’t notice. Often I start trembling and realise, but this time I just got on with it and took a huge cup full of vitamins at the top of the matinee on a completely empty stomach. I sang the opening song and the Mesonikticon – “That was the best entry you’ve done,” said Jox. By the time we got to Orthos I was feeling weird. Got the timing nice on it anyway, yes I know this means nothing to you. Then I went up to my dressing room and yarked an empty stomach full of pills into the sink. Not much to report really, just froth and acid. I have time in the show after Orthos so I had a shower so Lodo wasn’t puffy faced. Then I lay on the floor a bit. Some of the dressing rooms have beds. Ours doesn’t. Confound it.

It was a good matinee for me considering, but that’s my malaise – the work sits on top of everything else. I have to put it there so I do. All the rest was timing, maybe I didn’t need to be sick but I felt it brewing and made the call that it was better when I had time for a shower than when I was on stage in my gold costume. “The duke and senators of Venice greet youaaarrrrgggh”. Nobody is gonna walk barefoot to Palestine for that.

A mushroom risotto from “have you got any allergies” Carluccios (four times today I was asked, thrice by the same person). Then another show, grounded by the mushrooms. Such a warm house. They all stood up at the end. We could barely do that. We are all so tired. It was a very much needed validation.

Half one. I’m slow tonight. I’m gonna see what happens if I close my eyes and lie my head on this pillow. I barely touched the port but considering the day I’ve had there’s a reason for that. Fortnums from lovely Esta, she’s incredible, thank God for her. Self tape tomorrow for a one liner in a nice thing. Bring it. Three more weeks here and then I need to know what’s coming. eek

Understudy run this afternoon. What a treat. But for a bit of singing I mostly got to watch the show with full tech and just a different load of actors. Scott tore it up as Iago. Kevin was wonderful and clear as Othello. Claire in two parts including Emilia and I welled up watching her being brilliant. Maddy too, just a delight as Desdemona. This play has existed for so long, and these characters are mantles that different actors will wear in different ways. Graham was on as Montano and Lodovico, and it was unusual sitting up in the circle and watching the scene before my first entrance, feeling all the build of adrenaline and a strange sense of otherness about the fact I wasn’t waiting in the wings. He was elegant and bright and at one point in particular he threw up the end of a line in such a way as to make me want to remember to do it myself.

They cut fifteen minutes off the run time. That’s a lot of dropped cues and wallowing. I’m hitting the gas as much as possible but mayhaps we all need to be doing that, not least so we can get to the pub quicker.

My godson is in tonight with his parents and his sister. Perfect timing, they’ve booked an overnight stay. I might even get to have breakfast with them tomorrow. This is why I’m writing now as I listen to the bit of play I’m not in. Otherwise I’ll come to it knackered post show. Better scattered and adrenalised than tired and wanting to go to sleep.

I’m so proud of the covers today. There’s a young Guildhall lad, the last year of the teachers who taught so many people still flying in the industry. He was rock solid, as was everyone.

Back to a normal show, and then two more and I’m very much feeling the need for a weekend off right now even though I’m not understudying. Friends have been wonderful though, so many coming to see what I’m up to, what I’m proud of. It’s a good watch, it’s a thorny watch. It’s a grown up watch, so I’m curious to see what Hal takes from it.

Time to go sing “Logos Ponerias”.

I’ve made a bed for Nadia. When I used to go and hang with Minnie they didn’t have these sofa beds. I remember me and Ed Dick freezing to fuckery on two separate lines of cushions. The sofa beds are a great addition to these Waterside cottages. Michelle and I pulled the plastic off the mattress last night. Michelle brings her house on her back so I didn’t need to consider her comfort outside of opening space for her. Nadia has come without a huge and exquisitely refined backpack. She needs a bed. Lou and I have made one.

I love my patchwork quilt. It is the most eloquent present I’ve ever received. It was a rush job and half the material she ordered hadn’t arrived. She had one square of fabric showing the arse of a jaguar, and the rest of it showed way too late. But all the squares have meaning, and the colour shift is all thought through and honestly, people, if you aren’t in the market for an excellent Ayurvedic massage in Ditchling I can hook you up with a quilt just so long as you can pay what it’s worth. I still get lost in mine, and I like that the jaguar is hiding. That’s art imitating life. It’s an incredible piece of work. Somehow I’ve managed to seduce or be seduced by a genius.

Two shows today and I’m properly starting to appreciate the long run. Every show, we can tighten and deepen. Sure, within that there’s the devil telling us to indulge and spread out. But if we keep our eyes on the play and the pace then we can sharpen and sharpen. We are still wallowing at points, and it’s interesting to observe the moments of wallow and to see how quickly the audience gets bored of self indulgence even if we feel within the plot that it is totally justified. We have to keep it moving forward ever forward. My character is momentum though. He has to cut through all the horrors of the play and solve things. “I can solve this,” is a game of Tim’s and it’s something I say repeatedly to myself before I walk on and surprise myself with my final entrance. It’s all I can do not to say “solved” when I’ve finished my final couplet.

We are all so ridiculously happy up here, this company. Tim is a great director for curious actors. We’re all able to express, we all love each other very much, we feel just as it ought to feel in an acting company – a non hierarchical mess of creative fools expressing themselves as best they can. I don’t think I’m the only person who feels this is a special company. The tired reviews from people who are already dead just add to that. I think they all thought it would be raved about and wanted to be the clever one who didn’t rave. Bunch of animated farts. It’s a powerful thing this thing. I’m a small part of a wonderful telling of a strange sad tale.

Michelle is engaged in a wonder wander. She’s been at it for a long time. She walks with a huge backpack. She camps at dusk, breaks camp at dawn. Those of you that followed my Camino, she was the ship. She was steady. I would normally pass her at about ten in the morning, four hours in, and then she would happen at wherever I had stopped about an hour after my 3pm stop. She walked with inevitability. We made friends over laundry and eye drops. I was still pretty new with contact lenses back then and I think I coerced her into squirting liquid into my eye as I lay on a picnic table in the middle of nowhere on our first meeting.

She’s here now to walk The West Highland Way, but she’s broken her journey in Stratford just to see this guy she met on the path as he does what he set out to do. My random life has really borne out in this job. The fact that the friendships I’ve happened into are rarely just about the bit where we make ourselves part of the story… it’s probably healthy. I’m happy to give her a sofa bed and a hot shower and to share this cottage with her. We have experienced some seriously basic albergues together on the occasions it wasn’t practical to camp. She was one of the lucky pilgrims who had my donation funded stay at a four person Airbnb where we could cook vegan food, courtesy of a reader of this very blog. Thank you. We have been geeking out about Shikoku. And she came to the show.

Turns out I can get house seats on the day if it isn’t sold out. She paid twenty quid for a doozy. We went to The Duck after and then chewed the fat back here, and she will get to christen the sofa bed after my punchy sabotage friend slept in the car.

I’m thrilled Michelle took the time to come here and witness this part of my journey. We have both been covering ground, converting energy, shifting. She found a dime in her pocket and knew it was her dead mother talking to her, and she told the tale to Jethro and I. By my left elbow as I write is a glass jar with a 2p piece in it that represents the entirety of creation, so long as you were there when Jethro and I took the universe apart and rebuilt it. Emblems like coins carry history and weight, and can be filled with all sorts of energy. If we like to work with these things, they are easy if random launch points.

We need to move the bundle downstairs.

How the fuck have I picked up so many glorious humans? This acting company is impossibly glorious, and then people like Michelle come as audience and help me understand that all these weird choices I’ve made have created some sort of a delightful web that makes sense. Tim made a ritual. This is a human show, as clear as clear. I’m so very proud of it.

There goes Lou, and with her the ease of self care. I’ll have to try and maintain it without her now.

The circle was broken a touch tonight. Fin couldn’t do the show. One of us, and the youngest in the acting company. He’s a Guildhall boy so I’m invested. He has big understudy commitments. He hopefully just had a wobble, but Johan did his lines tonight and we all realised practically how, if we are indisposed, someone is ready to step in and be brilliant. The show goes on. It was here with this company that Ed came on for David Tennant as Hamlet on PRESS NIGHT. The understudy thing is well carried and the understudies are well chosen, but this is a stressful time for them as they often have multiple parts. They’ll be understudying AFTLS stylee, when they have to talk to each other etc. I had to fight myself as Toby Belch / Antonio a few years ago and found it joyful despite having to hoof oxygen out of cans in Colorado. There’s delight in admitting the craft of it. But… it’s a hard thing to do.

With one actor down, the goblins got in through the gap. We could have held the space but maybe we forgot for a moment. The gold wall went to fuck and there was a show stop. This is when our glorious Cat has to go on stage and talk to the audience. We had a bit of juggling, the interval was shifted, and John is a consummate pro and just adapted. Apparently The New Real had a show stop as well that was so extreme they had to cancel. Christ… At least we can play Othello in an empty space. The tech is just happening because it can. There’s nothing necessary in the tech. We could tell it in a cardboard box. But we forgot to hold the space.

I’m sure our brother will be well. It’s sad and strange to have a gap. We did the show, but the air was pissing out the side of our bouncy castle until we noticed and stuck tape over it.

Bedtime now. I’d have been asleep hours already if Lou was here. I can’t keep my eyes open.

Two days off, and both with Lou. We decided to do as little as possible today and just nest in our little cottage, so inevitably we drove up to Dover Hill and looked at the sheep. It’s all terrifically Cotswolds up there and was a good chance for me to speak the little niggly things that mean nothing but magnify when you are making a nebulous creative thing with many people and you all care about it but you are all very different. Things like the bundle are polarising because everyone has a very different eye on magic and more people are proud to be rational and know it’s all bollocks than the hopeful fools who trust that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

An hour or so of wind and damp, sheep shit and grass, benches and flies. Screaming children. Gorgeous but for that and a blowthrough is sometimes all a man needs to wind down.

We went to Chipping Campden on the way home which looks like it has been built in one feverish weekend by a child giant with a bucket on the beach. Pictures of Withnail all over it, that actor’s cautionary tale, very alive in the local imagination. I was wearing a long coat yesterday and it was enough for someone to shout “Oy, Withnail!” at me. Oh I hope not. Charming and magnetic, I’ll buy that great yes fine, but Vivian Mackerrell was dead at 51. I expect bits of it were shot round here… If not it’s just the wine shop owner being a fan. “We want the finest wines available to humanity…” etc. So do I, yes, but in moderation perhaps?

Anyway we are back in our little cottage now. We ordered a vast spread of curry from Simla – loads of great veggie options, delivered fast. Now we are listening to om shanti music to keep in with Lou’s mild obsession with India, and to gear up for a massage exchange in which I’m gonna get the best deal as she’s a trained Ayurvedic masseur and I’m just an enthusiastic dude with two hands.

Dark now. The hour is upon us. The winter has snuck up and soon it’ll be a month and a half of Christmas again, get ready for the onslaught.

There was a marathon outside my cottage this morning. Lou and I walked into it and down the side of the Avon. A sharp and bright morning. A good walk. We mostly avoided getting caught up in the runners. Thousands of them, encouraged by enthusiastic clapping volunteers. Far too much energy for a slow Sunday morning.

Back into town and up to a friend’s house to put a blind up. Nothing like a spot of drilling. Masonry bits and wall plugs. I think and feel we got the thing in nicely, although maybe would have been smart to shore up the work with some screws. I think the wall plugs and plaster will hold it though and partly worried that screwing more holes into it will just weaken it. It’s not like the blind weighs a ton, and Allie is not going to be hulking it every night.

DIY and walk completed, Lou, Allie and I hit the One Elm for a Sunday roast. Ten of us including Jethro’s famille. A chance to break bread and break down the week. It’s been another lovely week and great to know we have no show tonight. We ate, talked and then rolled back to Waterside where the power kept cutting off. I’ve been breaking out the tarot cards this evening, but just for Lou, Arlo and Martha. It’s my spare set of the old grandmother cards I love, and it felt they were doing what they usually do. Mischievous fleshy colourful arty cards they are. I love working with them. Haven’t done enough recently.

Now I’m in bed. It’s barely 9pm for heaven’s sake. But bed feels like the place I wanna be. Three more weeks up here and some change. I wanna make the most of it. Who knows when I’ll next be here in this capacity – I’ll slubber the gloss of it while I can.

Need to write some postcards too. Time is starting to happen though, with no understudy commitments…

The weeks are long doing this, but now we are getting into the run and those of us without understudy commitments are suddenly looking at a stretch of time where we can land in Stratford and catch back the daytime.

Morning will be long tomorrow, heralding the darkness, and we will continue to tell this sad tale of male violence and misinformation. It’s great, it is totally to my taste, and I really actively challenge the people who are writing “I came to Othello because I want to watch a beautiful woman being strangled.” We are looking at the whole journey and trying to be relatable because if we push things to extreme places then the people who want to see the strangling don’t feel uncomfortable about themselves for that tendency. We are only doing what’s in the text, what the writer gave us. “Put out the light, and then put out the light,” but there’s been generations of violenceporn on this show and “I’ll take that job!” they cried, these shuffling clever men, only to be disappointed.

I’m downstairs in this little cottage. I needed a bite of haddock chowder. Lou is asleep and hopefully I’ll be able to creep in without waking her once I’ve finished this and necked my camomile tea. It’s wonderful having her here and now two whole days with no shows stretch before us. I’ll miss this show terribly when it’s gone, but right now I’m glad I don’t have to do it for the equivalent of a weekend. Sunday and Monday.

Tuesday they need some of us to help out with education with a Q&A and I’ve volunteered my services. It’s Birmingham uni – that’s where Min was before she trained – so maybe I’ll get to say something inspiring to a future Min… Either way I love meeting and working with young practitioners. There’s always something to learn and the learning always goes both ways.

I’m gonna settle down to sleep, take a leaf out of Lou’s playbook. Brush my fishy teeth and put myself out for the night. We even went to The Duck for a swift one after the show. Living on the edge.

The Rollright Stones, just down the road from here, and now I’ve got some space and Lou is here, I can go and spend time with the energies there. They’ve cut a road through the middle, likely on the site of an old path but the proximity of cars and the separation of king and court might have done something to take from the power of the place. It still resonates.

On one side of the road, the king stone. Fenced around as people were hacking off souvenirs. This is a dolmen. This is a petrified king.

On the other side of the road, the uncountable circle of stones, 74, 70, 69, 76 how many stones? The king’s court, also petrified. In the centre, a circle of roses and cookies and I know immediately who has been making such offerings, pouring such libations. No other culprit but our Desdemona. Magic with roses. The family business. Lou and I augment it. She still had some cacao beans from Costa Rica. I had some white sage wrapped up in a handkerchief.

Magic doesn’t work very well with the sort of hidebound intellectual that ends up agreeing to pack off to Stratford and write up a tragedy for the broadsheets. I’ve been avoiding it until my agent rang and told me I shouldn’t be worried about it. So I ended up breaking a rule, read a few and just found people who – if you put a whisky in them – would tell you about how when they played Iago at university they did blah blah blah. It makes me prouder of what Tim has done. If they loved it we’d be a museum piece, or pure trickery – either way deadly theatre. This is definitely alive.

Cassio is drunk downstairs. I’m in my dressing room. Soon it’ll be Vico time, but with Lou in town I’m getting this written in the show so I can maximise my time with her later. We will go briefly to The Duck after the show. It is, after all, traditional. The reviewers would certainly be happy about that.

I’ll be back up to the stones before I leave here, for sure, likely with offerings. I’ve started to sew little bright bits of magic into the fabric of this play space where so many people experience these words and these vast stories for the first time. The stones are a charging point. And off to the side of them, in close conference, the whispering knights – very talkative still despite being older than Jesus. We have more to talk about, they and I.