In July, when I was asked to confect ‘another Christmas entertainment’ for my community, I viewed such a distant elephant with equanimity. Like memories of the pain of childbirth, the nightmares of amateur dramatics soon fade. Besides, I’d done this many times and survived to tell the tale. All I needed was to reassemble last year’s cast and then write something for them to perform. A piece of cake.
By October I was seeing things differently. The steepness of the gradient we had to climb was becoming all too clear.
Amateur dramatics are held together by string and paperclips. There are no understudies
Very few of this year’s cast are seasoned performers. Indeed, several members of last year’s company declined to take part, some with cast iron reasons, others who found they’d be washing their hair on all relevant dates. Can it have been such a horrible experience? Should we be offering post-production counselling?
On the other hand, I had a positive glut of backstage volunteers. What’s that about? Who, in their right mind, would rather be an unsung hero on props than out there taking a bow? Set painting or Being Generally Helpful were the most frequent offers. To date no one wants to be on sound. Too stressful, I suppose. All those cues to time.
By August I had recruited eight actors. Too few for War and Peace (abridged), but enough for a 20-minute skit performed to a captive audience of the deaf, the somnolent and those touchingly easy to delight. The question was, what should it be?
I lay awake, tormented by a Clerkenwell mosquito, considering the options. A parody of The Mousetrap? Arguably, The Mousetrap already is a parody. A Nativity play with a difference? Probably no quicker way to offend a diverse spectrum of people. Again and again, I came back to the idea of a Dickensian theme. And so was conceived Grim Prospects.
Writing a script is, hands down, the easiest part of the business. It’s just me, the blank page and my laptop, with no interruptions from bright sparks who want to tell me my job. The anxious moment comes when the actors first read what you’ve written. What if they hate it?
With just one exception, my actors are all amateurs. There’s no contract to enforce. They’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, or perhaps because of an unfulfilled itch to slap on a bit of Leichner Blend of Beige. If they choose to walk, they walk. Nothing I can do about it.
As it turned out, they didn’t hate the script, but other cracks soon began to appear. One stalwart, beset by age and health problems, returned his script to me ‘with melancholy affection’. The most elegant brushoff I have ever received.
Another, having secured a professional gig, pleaded for our rehearsal schedule to fit around the proper grown-up one. Actual paid work, rare enough for most actors, so who could deny him that?
We got to a week before rehearsals started in earnest. The Clerkenwell mozzer had retired for the season and I was sleeping a deep sleep of false security. At 7 a.m., a different kind of buzz. A text message. Our leading lady sent her sincere regrets but was retiring to spend more time with her family. I had quite failed to see this googly heading my way.
I found myself short of two vital things: time and spare women. Amateur dramatics are held together by string and paperclips. There are no understudies, no agency you can call. But as my old gran didn’t say: ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man.’ A couple of days of futile gnashing of teeth and cursing the Fates, and suddenly I knew what I had to do.
It’s not every man you could approach and ask if he might be willing to strap on a bustle in the service of theatre. I had to trust my drag radar that I wasn’t about to cause colossal outrage.
‘Me? Cross-dress? How very dare you!’
But no. ‘What’s the role?’ he asked.
Hook, line and proverbial sinker. I had him at ‘a kind of Mrs Wackford Squeers’.
I cannot exaggerate the relief a producer feels when the day is not merely saved but saved in buckets. When not only does a person say yes, but they also immediately start devising their costume. In the time it took to drink a cup of coffee, he had already arrived at Doc Marten boots and a lacy Victorian bonnet.
Beneath tweed jackets and old school ties beats many a closet show-off heart. Thank God for Englishmen.
This piece goes to print before the show opens, but I can tell you how the story ends. On the morning of 14 December, I will have a window-rattling meltdown about mislaid props and actors who have woken up believing that they’re God’s gift to the RSC. By 3.25 p.m. the performers and audience will have been plied with drink, by 4.15 the whole thing will be described as a triumph – and by 6 p.m. the only person who’ll remember much about it will be me.
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