Backstage at the Theatre Royal

Brighton’s Theatre Royal is one of  the oldest continually-working theatrical venues in Britain. There’s been a theatre on this site for more than 200 years, with the original building gradually expanding over the years and taking over adjoining houses and cottages, producing a  ramshackle, labyrinthine structure full of secret spaces.Actors ranging from Marlene Dietrich and Laurence Olivier to Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have trodden its boards; it is no anonymous space, but rather a receptacle of living history. The theatre can sometimes seem transient, with a new production arriving every week. However as I found out in my tour of the premises, the opposite can be true.  In the recesses of the building, its guts and bones, things remain timeless and unchanging.

Our tour guide is Tom the technical manager, a mine of information about the workings of the theatre. When Nick, the Badger photographer, and I arrive, we encounter a busy scene. It’s a ‘dark week’ at the Theatre Royal, with no performances. A production of La Cage aux Folles that was due to arrive has cancelled, giving an opportunity for the theatre hands to carry out some maintenance repairs.

The first port of call is the door through which we entered the building.  Called a ‘get in’ (apologies if I get the terminology wrong, I took notes on a Dictaphone which proved to be a bit crackly), it is through here that all  of the scenery is transported from outside.  One of the smallest of its kind, even  fully opened, this get-in is a tiny opening through which to manoeuvre  large pieces of wood. According to Tom, it causes many headaches.
All the terminology used backstage comes from sailing, as Tom explains.  One side of the stage is ‘prompt side’ taken from ‘port side’, and ‘stage right’ is taken from star board.

The stage floor is called the deck. Everything above, the scenery poles and ropes is called the rigging.  The operations backstage during a performance require many hands and a high degree of co-ordination.  Leaving the main stage we ascend to the upper levels of the theatre. At this height it’s easy to feel slightly giddy. I regret my choice of footwear and clothing (high-heeled boots and a skirt) as I climb gracelessly up the ladders.

The Theatre Royal is one of the few left in Britain where the scenery is still hoisted by hemp ropes. At the lower flight floor, piles of it are coiled at my feet, and many more are suspended from the ceiling. The ropes are heavy, even the ones unattached to anything. Hoisting scenery from these is hard manual work, and the moving of even one piece of scenery requires up to eight people, some of them precariously attached to safety lines.
A large winch used to hoist the big red house curtain called the ‘rag’ is the last of its kind in the country. The curtain material itself is around 80 years old, and the mechanism even older, 110 years or so. “It’s a bit like a working museum”, Tom comments.

Even graffiti and caricatures scrawled everywhere pay testament to the age of the theatre, with some of it dating years back. I am especially distracted by references to a ‘Mr Nod’, which occur sporadically on walls as we walk through the building.

Up again to the upper flight floor: I’m not brave enough to scramble up to the grid at the roof of the theatre, where a stage hand can sit casually astride a beam some 15 meters up off the ground.  As you ascend the ladder, this is the one point where if you slip and fall, there’s nothing to stop you plummeting to the ground below. Nick has a go climbing awkwardly up to take some photos. Up here the mechanics of the rope and pulleys become apparent.
The knots that secure everything have to be well done otherwise the repercussions can be serious. When repairs have to be made to some of the beams suspended above the stage, abseiling gear is often required. It’s not for those who don’t have a head for heights. To Tom’s knowledge however, no one has yet fallen from here and died.
It’s easy to imagine that there might be ghosts here. The theatre is a dark place, there’s not a single bit of natural daylight.

“When you’re here last thing at night or first thing in the morning, it’s pitch black, you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Due to the age of the building, it talks to you, you can hear the wood creak, if a breeze gets up the bars knock together. It’s strange, but the building lets you know that it’s here”.  It’s lucky for a playing house to have ghosts, and the Theatre Royal has three.  The first one is Mrs Nye Chart, the first female manager of the Theatre Royal (and whose house forms the foyer area at the front of the building), the second a nun, and the third a child who fell down a flight of stairs and broke its neck (lovely).

Delving back into the history of the theatre, Tom tells us that it may have been originally run by fishermen; hence the sailing terminology mentioned earlier. He thinks it likely that some of the large, old beams we can see were taken from boats.   Their worn, pockmarked and weathered appearance  suggests that they may have been salvaged from something else.  The history of this place is impressive. The main frame on this side of the building has remained untouched for most of its life, aside from a lick of paint here and there.

Descending into the bowels of the theatre, you encounter two levels. The first was built to accommodate a trap door on the stage.  At one time, you would have been able to pull back the whole stage floor, or make the floor rise up. The mechanism was designed to accommodate people and even a carriage and two horses.  The trapdoors are gone now, no longer fashionable. (although  apparently they are set to make a comeback: you heard it here first folks).

We also have a peek at the orchestra pit:  musicians are apparently quite notorious for wanting their own way, and dictate the vast majority of show times.  Rather than a director or lead actor, it is the orchestra who can often present a problem.  “The musicians’ union are the mafia of the theatre”, explains Tom. “When you get called in to work, you will come in for a minimum of four hours and you get paid per hour after that. Those in the musicians union get called out for three hours, and if they go even a minute into that, they’ll get paid for another three hours”.

Before we leave, Tom shows me one last thing. There’s one seat in the theatre where you can sit and watch the performance without anyone else in the audience seeing you.  Situated in a little recess to the left of the stage, it was originally the director’s box, and is now called the QE2 box because the Queen sat here with Prince Phillip for the theatre’s bicentennial in 2007.  I’d like to sit here next time when I come  to see something at the Theatre Royal!
However, if you’re not lucky enough to get this seat, and your student pennies  aren’t stretching very far, the Theatre Royal also does £11 stand-by tickets. You can get them from the Box Office one hour before the performance by calling 08448 717650 (bkg fee).  Subject to availability.

Audience Theatrics

Embarrassing stories from the Stalls

During a performance of Breakfast at Tiffanys in November last year an audience member vomited over a balcony, showering six people below with sick and nearly distracting Anna Friel from the song that she was singing.

Most people have a story like that; ones which involve inappropriate behaviour and moments of acute embarrassment. In the case of the poor soul who threw up everywhere, perhaps they had suddenly fallen ill, or perhaps as with someone else I know, they had drunk too much; after a performance of Bernard Shaw’s St Joan at the National, she tipsily tripped, lost her footing and  subsequently completed a spectacular descent (incorporating two roly polys and a mildly serious blow to the head), down a stair case.  It’s always at the venues which seem synonymous with behaving in a mature and refined manner (at least that’s how it always seems to me when I go to the theatre)  where  you end up making a complete tit of yourself. Perhaps what signals your entrance into the real adult world (university doesn’t count) is when you can start behaving in a moderately normal manner in places such as the theatre.
Read more

McGoughière

Liverpool poet Roger McGough has written plays before, but “never,” he modestly admits, with “as much success” as his adaptations of Molière. “It’s the combination you need, Molière and me” he jovially explains. After going to see his rave-reviewed latest adaption, The Hypochondriac, at the Theatre Royal, Performance Editor Olivia Wilson spoke to him about becoming ‘McGoughière’.

Read more

Rain Man

Having finished re-watching the film only an hour before the lights came up, I was doubtful any production of Rain Man would match the iconic film made over twenty years ago. However, I forced myself to keep an open mind – and was pleasantly surprised.

Read more

Our Man in Havana

Just over a year ago I visited Cuba and stayed there for two months. Havana, the capital, is a vibrant, energetic and charming city. It is a city that will surprise you at every turn, a city with many treasures just waiting to be discovered. Unfortunately I am completely unable to use any of these words to describe Our Man in Havana, a new stage adaptation of Graham Greene’s 1958 novel.

Read more

Rocky Horror Show

Alright I admit it: I’m a Rocky Horror virgin. I have neither seen the stage show nor watched the film. I have in short completely bypassed the alleged brilliance of the Rocky Horror experience.  When people hear about this they seem surprised, even shocked.  It’s like admitting that you’ve never seen a Tarantino film (something I was guilty of until fairly recently) or that you’ve never once felt the inclination to read a Harry Potter book. I also happened to be going alone to the Brighton performance, having only managed to get one press ticket, The Badger being not important enough to garner a plus one.

Some anxiety then accompanied my anticipation of the evening.  Would it be sadder to dress up in Rocky Horror costume, and go alone, or dress normally but be surrounded by groups in fancy dress, therefore betraying my virginal status?  A quick internet search proved to be alarming.  Apparently it was fine, as a first timer, to dress normally but I was likely to be asked if I was virgin and then subjected to some kind of initiation ritual.  Eeek.  Further perusal of websites informed me that I had to bring toast, rice and newspaper to the event, to throw on stage as part of the audience’s participation in the show.  Confused and overwhelmed,   I arrived  a few hours later at the Theatre Royal, normally attired but wearing red lipstick and uncomfortable high heels, with a small packet of rice in my bag, just in case.

Since having never seen the Rocky Horror Show this review is being written from the perspective of a first time goer, perhaps a disadvantage for a show that revolves  around an audience’s familiarity with the script.  So forgive me if the things that I remark upon seem wildly self evident to Rocky Horror veterans.

The pace of the show seemed initially slow at first;  although the excited audience eagerly shouted out ‘asshole’  and ‘slut’ whenever Brad and Janet appeared,  and the narrator proved to be none another than Christopher Biggins in predictably fine form, I was left initially underwhelmed.  Even the advent of the Time Warp failed to get things going, with only a few members of the audience jumping up to sing along.

This all changed, however, with the entrance of Dr Frank N. Furter. Played with brilliantly salacious glee by David Bedella, he utterly dominated  and enlivened the performance, embodying all that was gloriously smutty and extrovert  about the show.  Favourite moments of mine included the glove gag with Magenta, and the (very rude) bed scene with Brad and Janet.

I suspect that quite a few of the audience were virgins, as the level of audience participation never quite reached the pitch of frenzy that I’d been told to expect.  There was also no mention of toast or newspaper, and the rice remained in my bag (where it spilt, incidentally).  Nevertheless  by the close of the show  virtually everyone  was up on their feet, (I even managed a passable time warp dance) and the cast received a standing ovation  from hundreds of faux Frank N. Furters, Rockys and Magentas in the audience.  All in all I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  After all, who wouldn’t want to watch a glisteningly muscled young man prance about in skimpy leopard  print underwear?

Pass me a pillow, man

It’s never an encouraging sign when you start to a wish that a play would hurry along or, as I did, nearly doze off. There is potential for The Pillow Man to be a compelling theatrical experience, as amply demonstrated by the numerous awards it has garnered in other productions. However the performance that I attended at the Little Theatre proved to be disappointing.

McDonagh’s play centres around the figure of Katurian, a writer living in

a fictional totalitarian state who has come under suspicion of committing a number of child murders due to the startling resemblance they bear to the ones that figure prominently in his short stories. The play poses probing questions about concepts of narratives and reality; interrogating

the human compulsion to use stories to shape and frame our existence, the ambiguous delineation between fiction and reality, the uncertainty and instability of truth and meaning. The grisly tales of Katurian form the core around which the play revolves.

At the beginning of his interview with two detectives Katurian repeatedly protests that his stories mean nothing, that he has nothing to say: ‘I just tell stories’ yet it becomes increasingly apparent as the play progresses that Katurian’s narratives exert a far more potent influence than his initial denial may have suggested. The play seems propelled by the urge to interpret events through a narrative, reflecting the way in which people seek stories as a means of understanding and shaping their experiences; we see this reflected in how at the very end of the play after the final action, the main character returns to retell the previous minutes, as if to suggest that the event only becomes real once it has been shaped into a narrative.

The Pillow Man appears to be a play that tackles its subjects with impressive sophistication and complexity, however much of this is negated by the productions amateurish and clunky interpretation of the work. Small errors included the cliched ‘portentous’ music pumped out of the speakers before and after every scene, while larger ones revolved chiefly around the quality of acting. Crimes included an overly mannered and melodramatic performance from Katurian, ‘Acting’ as opposed to just

‘acting’. Especially grating were his frequent, false sounding sobs, which I began to tired of five minutes into the performance. Much of the interaction between all of the cast seemed stilted and unbelievable, in particular the relationship between Katurian and his brother, Michael. However, the production did exploit the rich vein of heavy dark humour that The Pillow Man is liberally doused with. The more successful moments of interaction between the actors and better moments in the play overall

occurred during the blackly comic banter between the two policeman .

A more professional and accomplished production would have made better work of Mcdonagh’s play.

SUDS ends last term on a high

‘Gratuity’ was everything I hadn’t expected and more: a self-aware, ironic and deeply sarcastic critique of theatre in all of its traditional forms (and of the critique itself). Kafka-esque in the extreme, it manages all of this without pretention and with superb comedy.

Read more

Student friendly theatre in Brighton…

Although a self-confessed fan of ‘the arts’, I must admit there were many factors that contributed to my decision to study at Sussex than Brighton’s impressive cultural heritage and thriving arts scene. But, after reading in all those well-meaning yet slightly dull ‘Welcome to Brighton’ guides of this aforementioned cultural clout, I was quite miffed to discover a distinct lack of small, independent theatres putting on new and exciting productions. Read more