Thursday 31 July 2008

A View from the Lighting Box

Congratulations to everybody who appeared in, and supported, the recent "Happy Families" production.
Any one who listens to Test Match Special will know that the commentators all vote for their "champagne moment", which is usually a definitive sporting moment from the five days.
Well I would like to recommend that wonderful moment on the Friday night when our illustrious chairman found himself having problems with his braces. The audience loved it, probably thought it was part of the show, and Peter carried on without losing a line.
So that's my vote for this production's "virtual reality champagne moment" - what's yours?

Saturday 19 July 2008

Narnia

I went to the cinema the other day. Liz wanted to see the new Narnia film, I wanted to sleep on the beach but it was raining so I thought the cinema was the next best thing.
On the way there, I'm listening to yet another debate about knife crime and the inevitable phone-in with the nutter who's carried a sixteen foot sword around with him for twenty years and hasn't killed anyone yet.
I wake up, somewhere towards the end of this children's film, having missed the adverts, the cartoons, "Look at Life" and the B movie, and there's this eleven year old girl on screen.
She's stood on a bridge, holding a six inch stilletto blade.
So - my thinking is a bit slow here after my repose - but I'm thinking knife crime, glorification of knife culture and here is the eleven year old hero of a kid's film defending a bridge with a knife.
If I could have found my shoes, which were deeply encrusted in yesterday's popcorn, I would have walked out in protest.

Friday 18 July 2008

The Charles Dickens Show expresses heartfelt gratitude

Here's squirrelchaser, again. This time, though, I reckon I've blown my cover!

Because, I'd like, very much, to thank the society for their encouragement with my Charles Dickens endeavours. Amazing support for Educating Charlie. I now have bookings for this, at respectable venues, this Autumn. Always looking for others, of course, and smaller venues and and private and corporate events, as well as theatres, are welcome. Schools, as well.
The show now has its web-site, which is :- www.thecharlesdickensshow.co.uk and I'd welcome feedback on same. There are, as you will see, other performances, all one-man shows, available.
So, again, thanks

squirry

Thursday 17 July 2008

Theatrical (near)Connections No.176 (approx.)

From Squirrelchaser - who else?

My brush with fame was in the mid-1980s. My first wife and I were with friends. We were walking, together, down St.Martin's Court, in the heart of theatreland when, towards us came such a well known figure. Floppy fedora, renowned classical look - it was...Sir John Gielgud! The wife of my friend, and I, went weak at the knees. We did! We nearly fainted at being close to such fame - it was unbelievable. We gurgled and giggled and were just beside ourselves. My wife and my friend were just..contemptuous of our performance. Sir John went into "The Salisbury" and we begged our spouses to agree to us all going in....but they wouldn't; the miserable sods!!

Theatrical Connections No. 175

Things you might not have known about Chris Bumstead, CADS family member since the turn of the century.

I once had tea, biscuits and a golden virginia roll-up with Sir Richard Briers.
Well, I was writing this book for the BBC - OK, I was "editing" this book for the BBC - "Hancock's finest Half-Hour" - and Richard had just had some critical acclaim for his role as Tony Hancock in a BBC Radio Three play, so it seemed like a good idea to ask him for an interview.
Just a cricket ball's throw away from Lord's cricket ground, we sat in their conservatory and discussed the technical splendours of the writings of Galton and Simpson.
Richard chain smoking golden virginia and the tape recorder whirring away, my nervousness ebbing away as his wife kept us supplied with copious amounts of tea and biscuits.
Later that day, I also had an interview with Robbie Coltrane, but that was under very different circumstances and is filed under Theatrical connections number 129.

Friday 11 July 2008

THE TIES THAT BIND

For once the room was quiet, all resemblance to Dibley had temporarily, vanished. The guilty parties examined their fingernails or looked hungrily at the biscuits. 'The point of the blog,' said the speaker, more in sorrow than in anger, 'is to show to any interested party who cares to look, who we are,' Warming to her theme, she continued, 'the website does an excellent job passing on INFORMATION , but says nothing about us as people, our family, here.

It seems to me that drama is obsessed with relationships, good, bad and indifferent. Our present production concerns itself with that very theme, life within a family. CADS is exactly that, with all a family's strengths and weaknesses and, notably, what can happen within it that would never be tolerated outside the 'nest'.

Sitting back listening to the speaker's justified complaints, I was reminded of an incident way back in Society anecdotes. CADS had,somehow, become involved in a pageant. The more sensible amongst the membership suddenly remembered previous engagements and made their apologies. The few that remained rapidly wished that they had done the same when rehearsals commenced. Dave M..... attended one rehearsal, made his excuses, in the manner of the best News of the World reporter, and left. At the next rehearsal the director was very terse about his departure calling him 'David' and mispronouncing his surname. It took a few seconds for the rest of us to realise who she was talking about. Kate T..... was up in arms. 'Who does she think she is, having a go at him like that!' she said over her pint later that evening. We pointed out that what had been said was actually very mild by CADS standards. 'That's not the point,' said Kate. 'we're family, we're allowed to slag him off.'

The rest of the CADS family would be waiting in the pub for us after rehearsal, dying to hear the next instalment.Margaret S....., glaring at everyone as she processed around the stage. Daring us to laugh, she re-enacted Elizabeth Tudor's triumphant reaction to the defeat of the Armada. I think her 'And where are the galleons of Spain?' will stay with me until my dying day. There we all sat,CADS and our cousins from CAOS. Roy C... head down in pain, Gaynor S... trying, unsuccessfully, to stifle screams of laughter beside me. 'How many verses are there?' she muttered therough clenched teeth. 'At least six,' I replied. 'Oh God,' she groaned and looked to the heavens. Finally Malcolm K.....holding his wig, the one that made him look like a forlorn spaniel, across his face like a yashmak. Not daring to catch Margaret's eye at the performance, I glanced at Tom S..., her husband, he was bent double.

As in all good families by the evening of the performance all those who had backed out were looking for back-stage jobs, their claim being the nned to provide moral support. We,who were still involved, knew better. The old adage still holds firm, who needs enemies while they've got family? Think positively, at least family do it with a smile.

Wednesday 9 July 2008

METHINKS I WAS ENAMOURED OF AN ASS

Marriages, they say, are made in heaven, though if this is the case there is an awful lot of twiddling with the raw materials that goes on here on earth, much of which, it has to be said, is unsuccessful.

I should at this point trot out one or two of statistics produced by those estimable people at the National Statistics Office for the benefit of columnists, bloggers and political parties. But being not so much lazy as short of time I think we can all take the point as read.

Simply put it is this: that a very large number of marriages fail and those failures cost us dearly, whether we are talking about emotional loss, financial loss, loss to the stability of society, loss to a child’s self-esteem and education, health, happiness and so on . Show me a broken marriage and, in most cases, I’ll show you an expensive tragedy.

Yet despite the vast scale - something like 40 per cent of first marriages end in divorce - we take little or no action to improve this state of affairs. In many cases love seems literally to be blind and unions are entered into that are manifestly unsuitable. When love departs, as love is wont to do, there is nothing left to hold the matrimonial edifice together.

Like one of those Shakespearean farces where the juice of something sprinkled in someone’s eyes is enough to make them keel over at the appearance of the most bestial of characters, so far too many people seem to marry whoever is closest at hand when the hitching time comes.

‘Methinks I was enamoured of an ass’ says Titania when she wakes. Alas, too many girls wake from the dreamy longings of ‘when, when, when?’ to find themselves married to arses and spending the rest of the time before the divorce asking themselves, ‘why, why, why?’

I should perhaps at this point exclude myself, my friends and my family most of whom have been freakishly successful in finding enduring relationships. But as my father had three wives and and my mother two husbands, I feel that a generation of matrimonial permanence is required.

Maybe I have been lucky, but my parents weren’t and nor are so many of the young lovelies that we see sweeping through the streets on a Saturday afternoon, dressed in improbable meringue in the back seat of some bizarre and unsuitable means of locomotion. Still most of us have been there: Elder Daughter arrived at her wedding in a boat.

I had the notion once that so great must be the cost of broken marriages to the National Health Service that the Government should institute a free computer dating service in every surgery, backed up with psychological profiling and parental checks.

In the old days, both boys and girls had suitors lined up for them by parents interested in forming financial or social liaisons with other parents. The young were pawns in such arrangements, but whether the heartbreak was any greater then than now, I doubt very much.

Then there is that famous painting of a young woman faced by a comfortably off but obviously dull young man of the Reverend Collins variety while through the window behind her we see an impoverished, but no doubt interesting bohemian character vacating the premises. The painting carries the explanatory title ‘Torn’ and the sub-title - for those of duller intelligence - ‘What Should She Do?'

I suppose it rather depends on the number of years she expects to live. If she is consumptive then she should elope with the gypsy. If she has the constitution of an ox, then she should marry Mr Collins and make the best of it. After all, the world is not exactly populated with sage, wise and beautiful Mr D’Arcy’s.

Indeed one could make an interesting story by bringing together Lizzie and her sister in old age and comparing notes, as it were. The manipulative Collins almost certainly would have become a bishop, while the upright Mr D’Arcy, I feel, would have come to a sticky end. For all we know, Lizzie might have ended up with the gardener.

While the practice of arranging weddings may still thrive in many cultures, we modern Bennets, have given up trying to marry off our daughters teLling them to do the job themselves.

Many subsequently turn to dating agencies or those small ads to be found in every paper or magazine nowadays. My favourites are those in the London Review of Books. For instance, I love the spirit of this woman who has clearly had problems with agencies:

Getting laid through match.com isn’t as easy as the adverts make it out to be. I’m hoping for better pickings from this column. Woman 87. Box xxx

or the following extravagant example of the genre:

I’ve spent my adult life fabricating reciprocal feelings from others and I don’t intend to stop now, nor at any other London Review Bookshop event I’m summarily ejected from. Yes, once the history section had emptied and we were left alone his voice said ‘I’m not interested,’ but his eyes very clearly stated ‘please follow me home and observe me from the shrubs in the park opposite until squirrels start to burrow into your legs, believing you to be a tree,’ Woman, 43. Reading between the lines even when the lines aren’t actually there.

She ends with the stern injunction: Don’t pretend you don’t love me. Box xxx.

But for she realism I go for this waspish example:

Most partners cite the importance of having a loved one who will listen to and understand them. I’m here to debunk this theory. The more you listen to your loved one, the more you will realise they talk crap, whine a lot and make unreasonable demands regarding holidays together (since when is a car ferry better than a plane, since when is a museum tour stop better than drunken evenings talking to oiled up Italians on a beach?) I’d like to state here and now that anyone responding to this advert and winding up in an emotional (or, even better, purely sexual and frequently tawdry) relationship with me will never be listened to at all. That way we can carry on the pretence of enjoying each other’s company for many an ignorant year. No lawyers. Woman 38. Box xxx