Hanging around
March 21, 2012
Well, Comedy is up and running. It was a tough tech – for the techies and our stage management especially – because it's a highly technical show.
I got hung this week (not hanged, fortunately) in a variety of ways. It was decided, as I couldn't be loaded onto the crane from the upper circle, that I would come all the way down from the flies in the last scene on two chains that would appear to be connected to my trousers.
We tried that, and while it was fun to be flown in from such a great height, the idea was quickly abandoned in favour of my being walked in from the downstage left entrance, hooked to the crane on stage – apparently by the collar of my jacket – and then hoisted up above the action.
I heard Jonny Bausor (our Designer) talking about the lighting 'shot' he wanted of the shadow of the crane hoist travelling across the stage towards me before I was hooked to it, and I suggested that maybe the shadow of Egeon hanging from that crane as it traversed the stage might be a great effect.
Everybody leapt at the idea. It would mean picking me up upstage of the set and travelling me on the crane all the way downstage to leave me hanging there until I finally speak. It depended on my harness being comfortable enough for a longer and slightly more complex flying sequence.
We had managed to adapt a harness in which I could be suspended for the minimum eight minutes in a state of (apparent!) unconsciousness, so it was worth a try. It's working fine. I think the audience either think I'm a dummy, or simply forget I'm there, because when I finally speak I sense a little frisson of surprise below me.
The show is being very well received in preview but we have some way to go before all of us and the audience are finally comfortable together.
It is wonderful to hear Bruce MacKinnon's 'Nell' speech being so consummately and successfully delivered after so many weeks of this most hilarious of Shakespeare's comic routines being rehearsed in front of colleagues too familiar with it to give it the laughter it deserves.
And it's great to hear an actor so obviously loving being on stage in front of an audience after a long and demanding rehearsal process – so long that it almost stifled creativity.
Today (Sunday) I took off to the countryside for a restorative walk. Shakespeare himself would have known how the ravishing rural landscape around his home town could heal the spirit. I'm sure that's why he has so many of his characters emerging from Arcadian adventures cured and reconciled to each other. It worked a treat on me.
Home to meet up with some colleagues, welcome the Nations at War company who have just arrived, and be a simply appalling team at the pub quiz in The West End.
I offer you two photos this time. Lauren, our LX programmer, has an intimidating array of buttons and screens in front of her, and she's been nimbly punching keys and tapping touch screens all week as the complex lighting is plotted and tweaked.
I watched her for a while. I couldn't possibly work out what she was doing but an impressive expertise was plainly evident. Lauren is just one of the battery of techies who start their day well before we actors do and who are still being given tech notes in the auditorium when we are comfortably quaffing in the bar.
My other picture is from the wonderful walk today. It reminded me of my line in Cardenio last season: “Now I am like an aged oak: alone, left for all tempest.”
Hmmm – that reminds me. We still have another play to get on. We start teching that one a week tomorrow!
by Nick Day
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