Still here

Ouch! I see it's been almost two months since I last posted here. My excuse? My reason? (depending on your point of view)  Real life. Other priorities. Whatever. Theatre-wise I have been rehearsing and promoting Desire and Pursuit. Work-wise I have been spending as much time as I can - which is much less than I should - on my book business. Life-wise I am in the middle of a year-long move to Edinburgh, which includes sorting out and moving the contents of my and my partner's home as well as the homes of elderly relatives. Amidst all these obligations maintaining a blog becomes a luxury that time seldom allows.

I'm here today to change my profile. Out goes the announcement of the run of Desire and Pursuit at the Etcetera Theatre in London which finished last week. (Aside: how do I turn off these annoying red lines which insist that "Amidst" and "Theatre" are not words? - oh, give me an intelligent Brit as a programmer and not an ignorant American...) Which leaves only the announcement of the Edinburgh Fringe run in August. What I will put in its place when that run comes to an end? Well, there's a profound question.

I am tiring of my involvement in theatre production. While I enjoy the heady sensation of seeing my works brought to life - especially when the actors bring out subtleties that I hadn't noticed or intended - and I welcome the regular and apparently unfeigned praise from audiences known and unknown to me, I am no longer willing to throw away time and money on projects which give so little return. By which I mean (a) critical acclaim, (b) large audiences, (c) money.

The reviews that have come in have ranged from indifferent to high praise. I don't mind the former - they confirm my belief that my works are not for everyone and it is generally the younger and less educated who are unimpressed by what they see. What really disappoints me is the fact that the reviewers are all self-appointed, a function of the world we live in, in which anyone with access to a computer can opine on anything, irrespective of their understanding of the issue. Even the most intelligent review is worth little if it is not read, which means that the only critics whose opinion really matters are those attached to the national dailies: the Lyn Gardners and Charles Spencers of this world. I have tried - oh, how I have tried, to get them to come to my plays to tell me how they loved or hated them, but to no avail.

The audiences. Yes, it's wonderful when theatregoers I have never met shower praise on me after the production, when I'd rather they waited until I had to cleared the stage and had a drink in my hand. And the more compliments they want to shower on me, the happier I will be. But when the total audience is limited to two or three or five or six people the impact of such compliments quickly fades. Tell your friends, I say to my new-found fans. Tweet, FB, blog, whatever, if you think these plays are as good as you tell me they are. Of course we will, they say, and of course they don't. So audiences remain small

as does the income from them. At the moment those of us investing in our productions are getting back about 15% of our money. That means we are losing 85%. After two years of such losses, I have come to the point at which I tell myself my ego is not so fragile that it needs to be constantly massaged by praise from the small numbers who see my plays. More important, I cannot afford such a drain on my bank balance. It's time to switch off the tap.

All of this means that unless there is some miracle in Edinburgh - ideally two or three influential reviewers come early in the run and gives the production such high praise that we are sold out for the rest of the week - Desire and Pursuit is likely to be the last of my work to see light of stage. It's been interesting, it's sometimes been fun, but it looks as if it's time to move on and away.

Dance, dance, dance...

Years after it opened, I finally made it to Billy Elliot: The Musical on Saturday, thanks to a friend who was spending a couple of nights in London in transit between Hong Kong and his native Rio de Janeiro and had bought tickets for the Other Half and me. The OH and I had seen the film recently and although he was exhausted after a twelve hour day, we bussed down to Victoria and just made it through the roadworks surrounding the theatre in time for the show to begin.

The curtain rose on a northern village with a parade of sturdy coal-miners, supporting wives and cheeky kids all singing loudly. For a few minutes I was disappointed - I couldn't hear the words, I wasn't impressed by the tune and I dreaded the thought that it was going to be sung-through - but when the music faded and the set segued into Billy's home, with Dad, older brother, Grandma and the ghost of Mum, I began to enjoy myself.

Stage, as every third-rate actor knows, is different from film. Film offers close-ups, subtleties and silence, allowing delicate thoughts, emotions and movements to float off the screen. To reach the furthest reaches of the gods, for whom the performers may be little more than matchstick men, voices must be loud and gestures large. I had thought that much of Billy the film would be lost in the transition to stage - his grandmother's frailty and regrets, friend Michael's longing, Billy's changing moods as he discovered dance and as his father discovered him dancing, the reactions of the miners to the cuckoo in their midst. I was wrong. The retention of key scenes and much of the dialogue from the film, plus the direction, which allowed brief moments of silence, all helped to maintain and convey the many different levels of the story -  the miners' struggle to maintain dignity and to survive, Mrs Wilkinson's feistiness and her awareness of the limitations of her skills and pupils, the shadow of puberty falling across young lives and so on.

Above all, what held the show together was the dance. I have to admit that apart from the times when I dated dancers and tried to show an interest in their craft, I know little about either classical or modern terpsichore and I only show real interest when dance consists of handsome young men in not many clothes stretching their bodies to interesting positions. Which means I can't comment on the originality of the show's choreography or the talent of the dancers. What I can say is that I was totally absorbed by and focused on the dancing that I saw - even though only once, when Billy dances with his older self, did it involve a handsome young man in tight-fitting clothes. What held my attention in scene after scene, was the gaggle of girls in class dancing with great energy and little talent, the ranks of policemen and miners confronting each other, Grandma dancing with her memories, young Billy and Michael surrounded by dancing dresses and . . .

The Angry Dance

. . . and Billy himself. The night we attended Bradley Perret was the miner's son. Twelve years old, with an attractive and interesting rather than good-looking face, Perret threw himself into the role with an energy, intensity and talent that suggested he will, if responsibly chaperoned and managed, become a great presence on the stage in five or ten years' time. Several times when he was dancing he brought tears to my eyes and the Other Half's eyes. The anger with his father, his duet with his future self, his explanation to the Royal Ballet were all performed with intense emotion and as he danced on and on, the awkwardness of his youth fighting the elegance of his intention, and I wondered where how that small body could contain and express that apparently inexhaustible energy, I was not bored, I did not want him to stop, I simply wanted to watch him dance and dance and dance.

If there was a downside it was the songs. (Music by Elton John, lyrics by Lee Hall) I couldn't hear several of them and those I could hear did not impress themselves on me - except for Grandma's melancholic memory of her man and marriage. At least, when I gave up trying to hear the songs, I could concentrate on the spectacle and with Stephen Daldry's direction and Peter Darling's choreography there was enough to keep my attention. Besides, the acting was excellent - Ruthie Henshall as Mrs Wilkinson, Deka Walmsley as Dad, Ann Emery as Grandma, not forgetting lesser roles but equally good performances from Howard Crossley as George, David Muscat as Mr Braithwaite, and (I hope I am not mistaken) Zach Atkinson as Michael.

In quieter moments I found myself wondering what in Billy Elliot's story and in Billy's dancing had moved me so much. The answer of course was all the complexities of humanity. Billy represents the best of us, our talents allowed to flourish, our dreams come true. That in itself would be cause for celebration, but we can only see his achievement against the background of the failures that surround him - the miners whose strike has been defeated, the would-be dancer who can only teach untalented children, the old woman whose husband beat her, the boy who likes to wear dresses seeing the boy he longs for leave forever. And even Billy does not have it all; he has lost his mother and London may tear him away from his community, nor is his talent guaranteed to help him rise above his fellow-students or protect him from the rough and tumble of metropolitan life. In short, Billy represents our fragility as well as our achievements; he is the epitome of our humanity and that is why we - or at least some of us - cry tears of joy and sadness.

As Time Goes By . . .

There are many reasons to dislike growing old, but one of the worst in my view is the speed with which days, weeks, months and seasons rush by. Last week the Other Half and I were in Richmond Park walking under some oak trees. He looked down for acorns, remembering when we had picked bundles of them on a walk through Northaw Great Wood. That felt like only the week before, but actually, it was six months ago.

I bring the subject up because it has suddenly hit me that my next production opens in just over two months' time and I hadn't started the publicity drive. So in the last couple of days I have been finalising designs for the leaflet (yes, I changed the wording of the strapline from "love" to "obsession"), writing the press release, which is now online here, and coming up with more pictures.

Not only do I have to promote the production of Desire and Pursuit at the Etcetera Theatre in London in July, but I have to get my ass into gear, as the North Americans so poetically put it, to promote the Edinburgh Fringe run the month. I have to do all that in addition to running my book business, spending some time promoting the No Vote in the upcoming Scottish referendum (a Scot by birth, accent and family home, I'm definitely not a fan of separatism, narrow nationalism or the individuals who lead the separatist campaign). It will be time-consuming, frustrating and tiring, as all theatre promotion is, but I believe that with our previous productions we are managing to build up a head of steam that will see an even bigger audience come to our run at the Etcetera Theatre - if you come, don't hesitate to say hello.

He loves me not . . .

Our next production opens in under three months and I'm busy working on the publicity. The first task is to put together a poster, which will form the basis of our leaflets and other advertising. This is the draft I've put together so far. (Yes, I'd far rather this was undertaken by a professional designer, but we're losing enough money as it is...)

There are - as many of you will spot immediately - several problems to be overcome. We need a strong image. We need a title, a strapline. We need dates and addresses and prices. We need reviews to entice the punters, sorry, discriminating members of the public who will rush to buy tickets. And we need to list three shows with straplines to further entice our potential audience. All of this has to come together in a harmonious, seductive whole.

This is what we have so far. Needless to say, there will be changes. The theatre address will probably be smaller and move down a little. The theatre logo might also be reduced. We will probably more a little more of the beauty's body - after all, there's nothing like nudity to draw the eye of the beholder.

Plus the strapline is likely to change. "love" is a difficult word, with different meanings for each person who utters and hears it, but there is a common core that suggests that the heart is more engaged than the groin. I'm not convinced that the three characters in Desire and Pursuit - the tormented priest in Angel, the cantankerous writer in Now We Are Pope and the old man on the beach in Tadzio Speaks . . . are in love with their respective obsessions. Lust, yes, Longing, ditto. But love? One of them indeed believes he is in love, but whether he is fooling himself is a central question in his play.

Which means I am thinking of changing the strapline to say "three one-man plays about beauty, faith and obsession". Will that bring in the punters? Or should we just have the youth in his loincloth posing at the theatre door? Nice idea, but since he's been in his grave for the last fifty years or more, not one that I am seriously considering.

Mysterious, baffling and comic

That's me. According to Views from the Gods, which reviewed A Man Who Lost His Mind, which finished its two-day run at the White Bear in Kennington last night. (Full review here) I am happy to say I enjoyed the experience. I played a commuter, complete with Financial Times, briefcase and bowler hat, who appears suddenly in a room inhabited by a man with amnesia waking up on his bed. Although there was a serious side to my character in the context of the play, my role was to provide a touch of absurdity. The laughs came, realising one of my minor ambitions - to play the comedian.

There was a little drama en route to the final performance. At the first dress rehearsal I was appallingly bad, muffling lines and offering little energy. And on the last night one of the actresses had not appeared by curtain up. She had been unaware that start time was an hour earlier than the night before and was rushing to the theatre. Tension among all the cast was high and that actually led to a much better performance by all than the night before, especially after the lady in question managed to squeeze into her dress with seconds to spare before her entrance.

Matt and Kellie, the producers, are talking of taking the production to Edinburgh Fringe, but admit that the scenario is unlikely. If they want me, I'll be there. In the meantime, I have to get back to my next project, promoting Desire and Pursuit at the Etcetera Theatre in London and April, and in Edinburgh in August. Of which more anon.

Half and Full Cock

Six hours spent in the upstairs room at the Lion pub in Stoke Newington yesterday, dashing out every couple of hours to move Patsy The Car and feed another parking machine. £13 for the privilege of spending five minutes driving to and from rehearsal rather than thirty minutes in the bus carrying the various parts of my costume. And all for the sake of 20 minutes rehearsal.

As I've written before, sitting around doing nothing is an integral part of acting. The fact that my part is small, taking up no more than the first ten minutes of the play, means that Kellie The Director quite naturally spends most of her time giving notes and going over lines with the other actors. Still, the free time let me read the copy of The Daily Telegraph which I had bought as a prop (my character has to read a newspaper) and, inspired by the rave, five-star review given by Charles Spencer to King Charles III at the Almeida, I spent quarter of an hour on the telephone waiting to get through to the theatre to book tickets for late in May.

Kellie was too polite to say so, but I wasn't impressed by my first run-through. "Half-cock" I said, referring to my relatively listless reciting of my lines. Second-time was much better. I had energy and movement and my character came truly alive. "Full-cock" was my judgement on myself and the others agreed. Perhaps the next one will be "orgasm", said Paul-who-plays-the-guru. Promises, promises, I replied.

Are you wondering about the picture? It represents my character in the play. It's a Magritte, one of several versions of an anonymous clerk. I consider the apple an improvement on my regular appearance.

Running out of time

I am. Running out of time, that is. Another day has come to an end and I realise that I've only achieved about 80% of what I set out to do. Theatre-wise, that includes going over the lines for my Sunday debut in A Man Who Lost His Mind (see previous post), in which I have to utter the immortal line "You're running out of time?" to a man in underwear lying on the bed next to where I sit in my daily commuter's coat. Ok, so that line is not unique, but Matt Crowley has given me more to work with. I look forward, for example, to reactions to my stating "It didn't please the parrots much, but they soon adjusted." Sadly, the pictured parrots do not appear in the play.

Why am I running out of time? The usual demands of family and flat as I spend 72 hours in Edinburgh. I'm back in London tomorrow and rehearsing Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which gives me plenty of time to put all the nuances I need into my ten-minute appearance. And with ticket sales looking good, I have plenty of motive to give a good performance. Come see and judge for yourselves. Facebook link