Blog: To The Theatre. TWICE.

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Myself and The Actors In My Cast List have been to the threate not once but TWICE over the past week and a bit, as we are DEAD SOPHISTICATED like that. Both shows were properly DIY and also GRATE!

The first outing saw us heading for distant PETERBOROUGH and its majestic LIDO, where Peterboroough Mask Theatre were doing their production of "Twelfth Night". To be clear, this was happening in an area NEXT to the swimming pool, not IN the swimming pool - this was perhaps the only improvement I could suggest in an otherwise EXCELLENT show.

For full disclosure, we had gone because it involved The Mylands, with Mr P Myland working on the production side and Mrs C Myland STARRING (because it IS starring) as Malvolio. I was thus all prepared for a night being proud of my PALS and not expecting much else but COR was I ever only half right. For LO! Catherine was AMAZING (weirdly despite knowing of her Thespian Tendencies for DECADES this was the first time actually seeing her in something) and the production was ACE, but then the whole rest of the play was GRATE. I was especially impressed with the LINE READING - I think that's the right term anyway, I mean the way that people spoke the Shakespearian LINES so that you could completely understand but without losing any of the POETRY. I have seen a LOT of Shakespeare plays over the years, including high-priced professional productions, where this has been very much NOT the case, so I was well impressed with that!

It also FELT great - it was lovely being outside watching the play take place between two mighty old trees with birds singing around, but more than that was the feeling of LOVE what had gone into it. As The Notes In My Programme pointed out on the way home, you could tell how much CARE had been poured into it by everyone, who were all doing it for the LOVE of it. It felt special to be there to watch it, and also wonderful that what they had come up with was so GRATE. The only downside was that we had to leave halfway through the second half to go and get our train, but on the other hand that did mean that everything was going JUST FINE for Catherine's character at that point, so we left with a happy ending for Malvolio!

The other show we saw was very similar in terms of LOVE, as it was a revival of "Verbal Diary", a play first co-written and performed by John Otway and Paul Bradley FORTY YEARS AGO. If you've ever read Otway's book Cor Baby That's Really Me you may remember, in amongst all the other adventures, the story of him taking a show to the Fringe featuring a massive book prop that somehow doubled as the scenery. I'd struggled to imagine how that would work, so was RUDDY DELIGHTED to see a new version in real life - a huge actual book where the actors turned the pages (and turned things INSIDE the pages) to create whole scenes in a fantastically creative and exciting way.

It was also great to hear a whole bunch of Otway songs that I'd never heard before, but which, as The Hits In My Hit Parade pointed out, were still distinctly Otway-ish even when performed by other people. The cast were GRATE, and Tom Johnson in the lead was especially ace, often CHANNELLING Otway, which must have felt odd because Otway HIMSELF was there as PROMOTER for the evening. We'd seen him arrive before the show and noted that two members of The Big Band were with him, which was VERY moving to see, and this feeling was increased at the end when it turned out that not only was the co-author Paul Bradley there but also the ENTIRE original cast and various members of the production team too! It says something about Otway that even forty years on he's still in touch with, and PALS with, the people he worked with all that time ago. There was quite a lot of Otway Love in the building (which was The Little Angel Theatre, an ACE venue I'd never been to before), especially at the end when Tom Johnson spoke about how Otway had inspired him. "Don't wait around for an opportunity, go and make your own" he said, and I must admit I shed a MANLY TEAR at this point because that is EXACTLY what Otway inspired in ME all those many years ago too, when I first read his book. It's all his fault!

It was a lovely end to the second of TWO lovely evenings, both full of people doing GRATE things just because they wanted to. Inspirational all round - HOORAH for The Theatre!

posted 22/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett

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