Keith's blog

Autumn Anarchy and other stuff
Sunday 12th October
It’s 25 years since the founding of the Friends of the RSC; as well as their undying loyalty as audience members this dedicated group support the RSC in many other ways, including funding the supplying of things that actors need in their digs to make their busy lives a little easier when they come to spend several months up here; e.g. kettles, duvets, furniture etc. Well there was a bit of a celebratory do this evening, Greg gave a fine speech of appreciation, Tony (Sher) cut the cake and there was food, wine and fun. Quite a few of us actors mingled and the RSC choir sang some pieces included a four-part arrangement of Happy Birthday by me! Well I have to do something during the first half of Love’s Labour’s Lost haven’t I?
 

Saturday 18th October
A truly anarchic final scene in Hamlet tonight! After Osric’s exit when all the Danish court enter for the final scene, some furniture and props need to be brought on; I’m charged with bringing on the queen’s throne. I picked it up by the arms as usual and just as I stepped out into the light onto the stage the right arm came away in my hand. I managed to catch the main part of the throne so that at least it didn’t clatter to the floor drowning out Claudius’s first speech, but then it was one of those split-second decisions: do I exit and dump the chair offstage or go on with it as it is? I instantly decided not to go off, as it’d look odd if only the king had a throne, so on I went. Having made that choice necessitated a second split-second decision: what do I do with the broken arm? Do I hang on to it, take it offstage or deposit it somewhere at the back in the hope no one will see it? OR do I risk trying to fix the chair in front of 1000 people without any of them noticing? I glanced down at the severed arm in my right hand and saw that the dowelling joining the arm to the top of the chair leg hadn’t snapped and so I may be able to bash it back in the hole IF the same is true of the dowelling at the top end of the arm; if that dowelling has snapped I won’t be able to mend it and will have to think again. The above thought process must’ve flashed through my brain in the time it took me to take one step; how the mind compresses time in a crisis! I get to the marks on the stage where the throne is to be set and carefully put it down. Thankfully the entire Danish court acted as a human shield and as discreetly as I could I put the dowel rod-end onto the hole at the top of the leg took a deep breath and thumped it with heel of my palm, fortunately it snapped into place crisis over I then started to cross to my position on the other side of the stage upstage right. But then it occurred to me that it may not be that secure and I had visions of Gertrude, played by Penny Downie, innocently leaning on the arm only to be precipitated on to the stage as it came loose. The nightmare vision of the Queen of Denmark rolling around the on floor and the resulting loss of dignity being all my fault stopped me in my tracks and I returned to the courtiers upstage left. I whispered to Riann Steele who is a lady-in-waiting to warn the queen of the situation, she in turn whispered to Sam Dutton (gentleman-in-waiting) who is in a better position to inform Gertrude of the parlous condition of the throne and as I return to my side of the stage I see him deliver the message to the queen and a slight flicker in her eyes confirmed that she’d got it … mission accomplished! Another mishap: in the middle of the of the big fight David T’s rapier blade snapped and the end flew off into space, creating mayhem, Peter De Jersey (Horatio) valiantly came to the rescue and managed to get another one from the fallen sword rack upstage and hand it to him so that the battle could continue safely, but where was the missing piece? It could be on stage and someone might slip on it and sustain an injury. As the fight continued and after it’d finished I scanned the floor but didn’t spot the offending shard of metal anywhere, indeed after the show it was never found so it probably ended up being taken home by someone as a souvenir.

Although those moments of anarchy when props or furniture acquire a life of their own and try to bamboozle us actors can be quite scary, it has to be said that there is also a certain thrill of working together with ones colleagues to tame the unruly beasts when they run amok. There was another occasion after the above in the funeral scene. When Gertrude responds to Hamlet’s outpouring of grief and rage at Ophelia’s graveside, as she ran toward him to try and comfort and defend him with:

… This is mere madness;
And thus a while the fit will work on him.
Anon, as patient as the female dove
When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,
His silence will sit drooping …

Penny’s brooch fell off her coat and skittered across the stage coming to rest at my feet, this may sound trivial but anything left on stage unplanned is a potential hazard even a small brooch, but this time I really couldn’t bend down and pick it up as I was standing very close to the main action and would’ve distracted from a very powerful and emotional part of the scene. This time I became the human shield, I stepped over the offending item of jewellery as if reacting to the main action and stood as broad as I could in my bulky trench coat willing Sam Dutton, who I knew was behind me, to twig what I was doing and pick it up, the telepathy worked, Sam was once more the hero of the day, and the magic of ensemble demonstrated once again!

Tuesday 21st October
Post-Love’s Labour’s Lost Press Night we’re nearly home and dry rehearsal-wise but for … yes you’ve guessed it … UNDERSTUDY REHEASALS! These took the usual pattern except that Love’s Labour’s Lost  is the production picked for the public understudy run which we played today. These have been a great success in the past and give audiences a sense of the work that goes on behind the scenes to support a show and also the hidden depths of the ensemble in that an actor who may only have a dozen lines in the whole season may well be playing a stonking great lead as an understudy. It is now RSC policy that all company members must contribute to the understudy process, thus in Hamlet we had Patrick playing A Captain and Penny playing Cornelia (the ambassador sent by Claudius to Norway), in fact Penny as thorough in her preparation as for this role as to play her with a Swedish accent to emphasise the character’s international credentials. In Love’s Labour's Lost we had David Tennant giving his Forester and Nina Sosanya her Lady-in-Waiting, but even with their assistance we still couldn’t avoid David Ajala playing Dumaine and Longaville and Riann Steele playing Maria and Katherine. It is possible to make a virtue of this if it is done in such a way as to include the audience in the game, which was achieved on this occasion with a change of hat and slight variation in the timbre of the voice.

We played to a good-sized house and the audience were very appreciative and for the last time this season the customary tea and buns followed in the green room.

Friday 24th October
SO now all official rehearsals are out of the way hip hip hooray! BUT, things are REALLY gearing up for the The Captain of Our Fairy Band gig. Over the last months we’ve developed some really very original interpretations of some classic songs – modest moi? – grabbing whatever rehearsal time we could, usually in our meal breaks in my dressing room. Our set of about 18 songs is more or less settled now and we spent most of the day with amplifiers, microphones and a sound system set up at the RSC rehearsal rooms to practise with our various guest singers and instrumentalists from the company. We worked really hard all afternoon and by the end our brains were more than slightly scrambled. The gig’s now set to go on the Tuesday 28th after A Midsummer Night's Dream so it’s probably done and dusted by the time you read this and we’ll be international rock gods! We can’t wait until next Tuesday, I’m sure it’ll be a storming night not least because last night we had after-show drinks with the lovely people from Mace who are the contractors responsible for building the new theatre, and they’re going to come along. They are great fun and absolutely passionate about the huge and complex project they have undertaken. I’ve made some posters to advertise the gig and say what its about (it’s also a fund-raiser for Matt and Kev’s New York Marathon run – see Open Day blog) so I went to their site office to drop some off between band rehearsal and the show. What with the Mace contingent, undoubtedly quite a few RSC folk and anyone else who happens to be in the pub at that time so there should be a good crowd!

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About blogger Keith

         

Likes: Music, cycling, food, theoretical physics

Dislikes: Queuing, flying, mice (and creatures of similar size), smoking

Keith plays Marcellus in Hamlet, Egeus in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Marcade in Love's Labour's Lost as part of the ensemble.