AlBarclay

It’s a lovely feeling, to be part of a thing. This little company making a populated walking tour in The City… It feels like we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. I didn’t really understand the history of The East India Company – and certainly not in terms of how it changed the world. I was just doing my job, but my job inevitably involves learning new things. Anu Kumar has written this content, geared to be communicated in crowded public spaces. She has found Lisa, ex governor of St Helena, a woman with really deep history and knowledge. She has assembled a team of practitioners.

For me it really is a fantastic gig in terms of expanding. The thing I am always looking for and always finding is willing creative humans. I like the ones who are into the art in themselves much more than the ones who are into themselves in the art. A walking tour about an old company and the relics of empire – that’s never gonna make people famous, so there are no people working with us whose focus is there. It is a lovely bunch of geeky humans. “I have no idea how we get paid for this,” I said to one of them. “I’m not even really sure how much we’ll get.” “I’m not sure either,” she said. “I just figured I’ll do it when I can and find out when they pay us,” I continued, and she laughed. “Yes, me too.” This is not us being naïve, this is us being good judges of character and being trusting. I’m just a part of a machine here, but it is a lovingly made machine and these are people with integrity. It could well end up being a joyful repeating thing that sews itself into all of our gaps between jobs. I know that if I were to tell them I have major cashflow issues after my card got emptied by the car thief, they would immediately help. But I’m happy for now to let it open.

I’ve met some excellent new friends. Young actors, musicians and makers. I often worry that there’s no more room in my head, as I’ve got so many dear friends I never see and barely talk to. But life is so long and varied. We sometimes just stay in touch by staying the same, and only meet up to ring the changes. This is why weddings and christenings are important, I guess. Times where direction shifts need to be marked by the clan.

Ffion helped me with a sexy last minute self tape this morning before the show. I’m getting better at organising my energy these days. I was able to give full focus to the tape, then set back and focus on the opening show. Then dinner with a generous Tristan, who reminded me that I’ve stood him dinner when he’s been low. What goes around comes around. We both had pie and now I’m home and my only real gripe about today is that it really should be warmer. But then if it was too warm I’d be cooking in my Smythe costume.

We are going to be adding new shows as interest comes in. If you fancy it, the eventbrite is here. Multiple actors sharing all the parts so there’s no guarantee I’ll be there, but that feels respectful of our self employed nature, especially considering we will likely be running when possible for the next three years.

Dress rehearsal this morning. Two times through, which was a relief as I expected just one. More or less as soon as I started speaking the first one the writer started giving me writer’s notes. Writer’s notes aren’t necessarily helpful to at this stage but I’m big and happy enough to understand they come from an excellent place. I’ve seen things come apart when writers give impossible notes to insecure actors. I’m not insecure and the notes were good. There was just a degree of nervous energy involved that might have been better absent at this stage when people need to step into their confidence. “It’s yours now,” Pinter would say when asked about his obtuse stuff by actors. Good on ‘im. Come and do all your anxious stuff when the rest of us aren’t anxious and we will lap it up, but when we are about to show we don’t need left brain.

We have a thing and the thing will be lovely even if people are occasionally wearing the wrong hat. Content is always gonna beat style in the long run and we are gonna nail the content down pat pretty quickly, with minimum rehearsal, and the style is just gonna show. Some brilliant people involved, truly. Recent graduates of some of the best trainings in and out of town, smart creatives assembled just by dint of having existed for long enough making nice things and not being arseholes… and me. And a brilliant and motivated writer. And our “tour guide…”

I met an incredible woman. She is at the heart of this tour. She used to be governor of St Helena, where my great grandfather went into exile with his dad who wrote Napoleon’s biography. I am so curious about that island, with my island obsession. That and Ascension and Tristan de Cunha… There are so many archipelagos, so many strange islands… But God I’m drawn to them, by shadows of my past and those of my ancestors.

It also gives me a very different eye on Napoleon to what I casually hear, to the prevailing narrative. “History is written by the winners”. Oof. What might?

We spoke about the island. He escaped from Elba and made Waterloo so he was sent somewhere truly remote. What a thing. He may or may not have eventually been poisoned anyway. There’s an account of his life in six volumes written by great great great grandpa, and I’ve got an early draft of it. It’s in French or I would see how it correlates with the eventual published text. My French is good but not that good. He was Spanish naturalised to France which made it hard for Kerry to track him down on ancestry… the name changes all the time. De Las Casas, De las cases, delascases… And he was Napoleonic. French, Spanish, Corsican? Who gives a fuck if we are all united. They were trying for a big idea.

Then I had to rush off to Glyndebourne. Merry Widow. An old Fitzrovia Radio Hour contact is associate director and Lou is always gonna be involved somehow up there. What a delightful thing. A proper romp of an opera with incredible costume and energy, so populated, so bright, so merry. I’ve got the can-can in my head.

But it’s bedtime. First show tomorrow and I have to send a tape looking sexy in the morning.

Off we gooooo

And Brian is straight off again to Majorca. I can’t keep up. It seems neither can he.

I’m back home alone and running a bath for an early bed. Dress rehearsal for the East India at 9am and then I’m off to Glyndebourne for a rare and fleeting assignation with Lou ahead of my opening show at noon on Friday back in London. Lou and I are out of sync with work at the moment, as whenever I’m free she’s working and vice versa. Good that we’ve both packed up the jobs I guess, but not the most sociable situation. This is why it’s worth snatching an afternoon to be in nature and culture with one another even if my head will be full of show.

So after doing my dress, I’ll be at the Merry Widow open dress tomorrow thanks to Lou. A good friend is assistant director so I might get to see them too. Then I’m looking forward to a bit of culture and a nice picnic. It’s all very weather dependent at Glyndebourne, but the prognosis is pretty good, so I’ll get to see Lou and enjoy a spot of lovely light operatics in the sunshine. Meantime I’ve just been pulling jobs together wherever I can to fill the gap until late August. I’ve really got myself into a pickle with my expensive fun in Japan, but this is the way of the world with me. If I can keep balancing feast with famine it’s all good. But tonight I’ll be raiding the kitchen cupboards and pulling out more of the things I bought when I felt flush. It’s a decent pattern. I’ve got Cannolli beans in there, jarred ceps and dried morels, foie gras, various cassoulets. It’s not just noodles and rice here. With ingenuity and a few cheap staples I can eat like a king for about a month, and I might well do that in the hope that I can replenish next time I’m in fest mode.

Some chauffeuring, some event work. I still want to try and fit in some sort of a thing that ensures my casked ale goes out to people, and I’ll need to go to Jersey, around a building (if flexible) performance schedule for Lark.

It’s only half eight and I’m gonna just sluice myself and get into clean sheets. No work today so no spend. I’ll be happy just being asleep.

I’m home. It’s not cold. On my left hand side, Brian is triumphantly returned from The Ukraine. On my right, Tom is working into his laptop.

I’ve been listening to our future leaders. It really is frightening that this is where society has taken us. Rishi, a man made of paste, no clue about what actual people smell like. Kier, so used to lies and protection that he has forgotten that questions are to be answered…

Rishi pulled out some nonsense £2000 figure. “You will cost every household £2000”. This is the Tory projected cost of his policies. It’s an open goal. “You have projected this figure based on how you are used to raising money. I know you’ll find it difficult to swallow as a billionaire, but we will not be using the bottom to fund the top.”

I got so bored of Starmer being evasive and nonspecific, with his nasal voice, that I tuned out. He’s (apparently) our guy! Blair was dynamic and sharp. This guy is a blanket. If he gets in, I’m scared he’ll just be nothing and that his nothing will be used for another 50 years of the Tories setting fire to everybody. After all, he was the guy who chased out Corbyn for refusing to sign a document saying “Criticising the actions of the nation of Israel is antisemitism.” Quite rightly Corbyn (socialist sadly) felt that no government should be exempt from criticism. He refused to sign and it was the wedge that allowed labour to get the reds out from under the bed.

But surely leaders have to be able to criticise allies? What happens if an allied country were to initiate some sort of slow genocide while observing due process? We would need to be able to tell that country that human life has value – that their actions are awful… Surely?

I deleted the air raid app as Brian is back from Ukraine. He has learned a lot, and seen what it is like over there for real. A helpful eye, particularly as the Russian propaganda machine is so incredibly evolved. Nobody does misinformation like them. We have an election coming up and I have no idea what the people running the misinformation factories think is the best outcome, but the vast majority of humans on this planet these days are talking potatoes. They’ll take on the flavour of the sauce, and won’t even understand that the sauce was made by someone.

I’m disappointed. I can’t think how else I would feel. Kier is terrified to be something. In America you’ve got the demigorgon lining up for a slug out with a dead fish. How do you mobilise patriotism enough that, like in the Ukraine, you can send these passionate youth to their deaths? It is important to love your country, and have an idea of what that means. But so many people seem to be defining things on what things aren’t supposed to be. Not what they are.

I’m too messyheaded today. bedtime

There’ll be some elections. Nothing will change. And we will all die in the end.

I am absolutely shattered. Heavy unicorn costume, ambient heat, lack of air circulation, dancing.

Today I just rested, drank water and ate tinned fish. Can of mackerel on toast mashed up with some cheese and cream and baked for 8 minutes. Can of sardines with tomatoes on toast. No sense pushing the boat out at the moment. I’m skint, but like the finer things, and I needed to rebuild myself after overspending last night. I’m all about working out how to do the finer things for cheap right now. I booked a gig late August, but I fear there’s a big “tick” by my name in my agent’s office, so the only person looking for work in the gap is gonna be me. A little bit of driving, a little bit of unicorn dancing. And so the world goes round. I’m very good at finding the weird things. The weird things are very good at finding me.

I’ve got two pressurised barrels of good quality booze that need to be tapped in the next month. If anyone has ideas about how to turn that into money I’m listening. One stout and one ipa. I’m tempted to run some sort of pop up summer event. If I get a pressurised dispenser second hand for about £400 then I can likely sell the contents of the kegs to offset the dispenser cost. Then I’ll always have the dispenser and it’s not like I won’t work more shows where it isn’t all used.

The East India Company thing will perfectly fit in to stop me from running out of tinned mackerel. It might not provide steak, but mackerel is protein and makes me happy too.

I’m tired and uninspired today. Likely gonna open a can of horrible free flavoured soda and dump some of it into a glass of Japanese whisky. Then drink it, pass out, and try tomorrow out for size. I might have put on the telly but Tom is staying over. I might have played computer games but I’m bored out of my skull with FF12 and too stubborn to start something new. I might have read a book but I’ve got nothing at the mo. This is one of those interim days. Sleep will bring new motivation, I reckon.

I’m gonna be busy and then I’ll wake up. The guys from the club night loved our energy, but I bet that both of us have been useless today as a result. I certainly have. Haven’t bothered calling her and asking. She wouldn’t answer anyway.

The two halves of today could not have been more different.

Morning found me in The City. I’ve found a lovely group of people and I am thoroughly enjoying the thing I’m involved in, and learning as I go. There’s so much about The East India Company that I wasn’t aware of, and the dire times in this country, just out of the plague. Elizabeth’s England – mostly we think of it through Shakespeare, but even then we forget the stakes. Her court was a brutal place – you could get killed pretty easily if you weren’t paying attention. Executions were common. Many of the most powerful nobles and her lovers got the chop. She resembled her dad in that way. And yet she was canny enough to rebuild, with careful choice of who she invested in and why. Plague was terrible for us, and we were falling behind on the world stage. The decisions she made indirectly led to the vast and awful empire. Pillaging on a global scale, but generations of economic security for the few who were here and doing well.

A thoughtful day in the sun, largely. The city is quiet on weekends and we were working on site. Occasional shouty window people, but this show is part storytelling part walking tour. It’s a good frame and now I see it from the inside I can see that it fits together nicely.

I love meeting younger actors too, as Lou will attest. I enjoy and remember the possibilities. What will these people make? Where will this strange passion take them. It is always the way that people come in and out of our working life. I’m happy these people have come in, and on and off this might provide joy for the next three years, when I’m not swept up in something out of town. Multiple actors in each role so it is easier to be flexible – the company understand the pressures of being artistic freelance, and the need to be available for that mystery last minute replacement thing that changes everything…

As soon as the clock struck six I got into my car and drove to Scala in Kings Cross, where I put on a rubber inflatable unicorn costume and danced like a maniac for hours. I was absolutely drenched in sweat after about thirty minutes and by the time I got home I had no moisture left. Retro Italian House music. I’ve done it before. They want us back. Thankfully I do it with a friend and we have found a pattern where we don’t get too knackered. But I am pissed off with myself for forgetting a spare t-shirt or two. Next time. I’m absolutely shattered. Running a bath.

Into rehearsal for this thing in the City of London and now I’ve met the people and understood the thinking I’m considerably more upbeat about it. Learning slightly odd lines in isolation is tough, and maybe I’ve been spoiled – a lot of my last minute learns recently have been Shakespeare. He’s just so easy to learn once you get under the skin of it. You have the verse to help, and there’s an unerring writer’s instinct in those long texts that is pretty much universal and gives the lie to the “committee” theory. The thoughts connect to one another. There are very few vast logic jumps, of the sort you have to make sense of by the half dozen a page with many axe grinding modern scribes. He wrote people. It really isn’t just a quirk of timing and contacts that caused him to jump to the fore. He’s working on so many levels. He uses the sound of words so well for atmosphere and double meaning. He’s honestly even properly considered the vowel sounds… When I hear modern actors translate his words it is always disappointing. It proves they can’t listen to more than their own intention.

An example? The other night there were loads in a production of Twelfth Night I saw. I didn’t have a notepad but I was largely confused as they rarely were necessary. The one I remember was perhaps the one I saw the reason for the best, so it stuck in my mind when other less logical ones fell away. It’s Orsino. I’ve never played him, don’t really want to, it’s not my part. Still, he has romanticised his own feelings towards Olivia. He’s the guy who says “If music be the food of love, play on”. This is an attractive eligible man who really likes the idea of unrequited love, of pining after someone. He’s romanticised his own lack of clarity about someone who just isn’t into him. He thinks if he loves enough, somehow it’ll change. Rubbish of course, Shakespeare knew it, but incels across the world haven’t caught on and never will. Lucky for him Viola just fucking gets his noise and can cut through the bullshit, plus he’s hot and rich.

He sends Viola to try and persuade Olivia to admit him. She asks: “Say I do speak with her my lord, what then?” (What should I do if I’m allowed to speak to this woman you so desperately adore?)

O, then unfold the passion of my love.
Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith.
It shall become thee well to act my woes.
She will attend it better in thy youth
Than in a nuncio’s of more grave aspect.

Leave aside the fact he’s outsourcing his own eloquence. That’s Orsino all over.

Nuncio’s. A messenger, in Latin. It’s an awkward choice. The actor I watched recently substituted the word “messenger”. “Why would there be such an awkward choice in an otherwise pretty clear instruction?” he maybe asked. Let me try and make sense of it.

Read that passage above, and only speak the vowel sounds. Try and sound longing. If you know iambic pentameter then let yourself aspirate the vowels only on the stressed beat. This is generally a brilliant exercise to find out how your character is feeling anyway, without putting anything on it. Notice how every stressed beat has a long aspirated vowel. “O theeen unfooold thuh paaashuhn oooorv mai laaaahve.” etc (I can’t write phonetics) to “than iiiin a nuuuuncyos oooooorve more graaaaaave aspeeeeect” Now do it again with”messenger” instead of nuncio’s. Try them both, to make them sound fussy and to make them sound longing. Nuncio’s just sounds more longing than messenger. messenger = ééuh. Nuncio’s = uheeoh.

Shakespeare phrases it awkwardly. Because he’s a fucking genius. And Orsino is romanticising himself. So sure he’ll speak Latin randomly from time to time – it’s a romance language – and every one of his stressed vowels will be aspirated if you go with it. And who gives a fuck if a modern audience doesn’t get it, there’s tons they won’t get anyway, this stuff is over 400 years old. Only one in a few thousand modern people will hear “nonce” in nuncio’s enough to derail their comprehension. It’s lazy work. It doesn’t need to be done. If you’re gonna substitute a word, make the fucking vowels work with the substitution. Shakespeare is working on so many more levels than just meaning. I mean “courier” would be better than messenger. The vowels are a bit longer and less fussy. I just pulled that out my arse. These guys had a rehearsal process. But just… don’t be so arrogant and lazy. This stuff is still around because it is stuff.

I haven’t really got space in my head to write this at the moment. Just out the bath, I’ve been running lines in my head but this is buckets of exposition and without a context to stick it to they just don’t hold well. I’m happy to learn my lines in advance when I don’t have to come up with all sorts of logic jumps to make sense of why I have connected one thought to the next or phrased something unusually. But apparently this is an existing show and the last guy couldn’t hold it in his head. I see why. But I’ve been confident with harder learns than this. Most of the corporate stuff I’ve done for The Globe has been equally as hard to learn, and I do that with the appearance of absolute confidence.

Learning comes in surges. You cram it in your head and then wait a bit while it settles. In the gap it is actually helpful to do something totally unconnected. Truth be told, it is useful to do that during as well. The one thing you don’t want to do is accidentally fall into patterns of movement or speech, like crap teachers teach schoolchildren. I find the most helpful thing is to be distracted. But maybe that’s my neurodivergence coming into play. I learn well while driving or doing the dishes. Or invigilating exams, running silent inside my head while watching the room. Things that can’t be predicted in terms of movement. Then you can test if the meaning has been learnt, or just the noise. Until you have the meaning you can always hit blanks. Once you’ve got the thought structure it is impossible to dry.

It’s harder when there’s not much intention – when the character is written to serve an idea and the thoughts are haphazard. But that’s where craft comes into it, and as I said yesterday, if you take the job you do it to the best of your ability or you’re an asshole. I learnt that the hard way doing a terrible play at The Finborough for no money and putting in minimum work. I should never have accepted it in the first place. We learn by doing but that was a messy way to learn and it did some damage.

So I’ve hit brainflood for the night. Tomorrow I’ll have to feel easy and relaxed first thing in the morning. So I’m off to bed and it is only just gone ten. Alarm is set for very early tomorrow so I can cram more with a fresh head. The context of this is that I’m playing the characters on the wrong side of the moral debate in the play, and like so many “villains” they are somewhat one-dimensional, often in scenes with people who are more rounded.

Anyway, all is well. It’s gonna be ace. They’ve already played it a few times and I get the feeling it’s a joyful show. Bedtime for me.

“How on earth do you learn all those lines,” is one of two questions you always get when you say you’re an actor. That and “Should I know you?” to which the answer is always “yes” because that’s how the word “should” works.

I’m honestly not sure at the moment about the first one though. Out of context, learning all these lines is proving sticky at best. The writing is somewhat on the nose, but as a result I kinda suspect that they aren’t precious about exactly how it has been phrased, just as it doesn’t appear as if they have put much thought to that aspect of it. Functional monologue follows functional monologue and everyone speaks their subtext. My job is to eat all of that, put aside any issues of taste (I took the job, I do the job) and learn the thing so I can give it everything I have. This I will do. I have three characters with no particular distinction in their voices on paper.

Got another day before we start rehearsals and I’m sure we will find ways to differentiate without going into the hell of panto. With all The Factory madness, with the white noise success/failure of The Odyssey which will forever be my finest and my most terrible work, I’m pretty chilled about things now. It’s never stressful anymore this job I cornered my life into doing. Even if consistency has been variable over the decades I’ve been working this acting mine, I’ve had enough time at the actface to trust my pick hand.

I’ll meet a whole load of people on Saturday who will almost certainly be younger than I am and possibly expecting me to be some terrible old stick in the mud. I’ll have to switch off my enthusiastic gobshite muscles and be humble and listen and give space, and to do that I don’t want to have them start worrying that I won’t be off book in time. Shaky line learning can waste so much time in late rehearsal. I like to learn organically with theatre, but having been filming more often these days I kinda dig the whole game of showing up ready to go out the box. My plan is to come half ready. Get the beats in roughly, square them off live. No time for rehearsal really. Fuck it. I’m in. They’re paying me. Not what I’d get if I had gone to the bar like pappy wanted. But enough that I can likely avoid bailiffs if I max my credit card.

It’s evening now and I’m off work. I’m obsessively watching Clarkson’s Farm while playing FF12 on my Steam Deck. Clarkson is a really interesting view on the farming industry in this country. It’s worth getting over any distaste you have for the man – he’s doing something interesting here. With an annoying amount of money and privilege. But still it is fascinating. Final Fantasy 12 is just noise, which is why I can do them both at the same time. Japanese rpg, atrocious voice acting – some of the worst I’ve ever heard in a computer game and I watched the intro to Alien Breed, Tower Assault on my Amiga in the nineties. But the gameplay is smart and they have a DIY AI battle system that with enough tweaking can be very satisfying as it runs itself and deals with all eventualities if you’ve thought of them.

I should go to bed soon though. Just one more episode. And I need to get enough gilm to buy better magic.

Today mostly just looking at lines and recovering from a hangover. I didn’t drink a lot last night – I was home alone – but I rather randomly mixed it. I had a cardamom gin and tonic, then a very hoppy beer, then a glass of white wine, then a whisky. I should have learned many years ago that nobody should mix, particularly like that. You can get away with mixing if you drink the strongest stuff last. I went to sleep happy and woke up vile.

Trying to learn lines was unpleasant with a head full of beef. Even walking was a horror, and my guests have long ago eaten all the painkillers without telling me. I use them so rarely that I put packets of them visible in the bathroom and expect them to be there in my hour of need. All gone. Brian suffers from migraines. It was three in the afternoon when I remembered that I had some emergency codeine in the car. Tiny pills but nuclear. By five I could move without swearing. I should probably buy some tramadol off one of the dodgy people who are still sending me text messages after twenty years because I bought some pills off them in festival season.

Which reminds me. Festival season. It used to be a huge part of my calendar, but since COVID it has been a desert. I want to do some performance work at festivals this year, ideally, but other work would do. Since I booked my next acting job starting late August the auditions have pretty much dropped off entirely, so I can’t rely on filming to tide me over until then. Bring on the festival jobs. I don’t even know who to pitch walkabouts to these days. The world has moved on. I reckon there’s stuff out there though. Bring it.

I’m in bed earlyish. It was a friend’s birthday but I couldn’t drink much with the codeine plaster over what I did to myself in front of the telly last night. I found myself empathising with Jeremy Clarkson. Lord.

The next two days I’ll have to be self disciplined to learn stuff and be a responsible adult. I’ve got two days rehearsal this weekend and that’s it for a bit of unusual street theatre type madness.

Right now I’ve got hiccups. I’m gonna have a chamomile tea without whisky. All will be well. Maybe I’ll try and drink a glass of water upside down.