Saturday, 30 December 2006

Walk Away Renee

by Tim Massey

As noted earlier in this blog, keeping regular diaries and journals isn't a strong point and here I am blogging the final days of Salt'n'Sauce in the seasonal hiatus between Christmas and New Year - so much for this being a complete heat-of-the-moment, up-to-the-minute record of the production. I have been writing about the show consistently since its last night, though, first doing the foregoing notes on 'ownership' of a play for Jo's creative writing essay (she asked for just a few lines, but I felt the need to bang on ad nauseam - it's a deceptively complex question) and then composing a feature on the production and Theatre West's Inside Out season for this month's writernet bulletin. While this entry is more of a retrospective account, most of the previous posts were written in the moment and at the time.

Thursday, 9 November, proved the lowest turnout of the second week of the run, drawing an audience of 37, a healthy number that filled the raked seating in the Alma and made it seem like a sell-out because the usual front row of stacking chairs had been removed. I was pleased that Simon Reade, Bristol Old Vic's artistic director, made it to the performance and he seemed to enjoy the show, although he was a little taken aback to be sitting next to its author.

The show finally sold out its last two performances having come very close to doing so several times before, particularly on Tumbleweed Night the previous Friday. Friday, 10 November was so much of a sell-out that extra chairs were needed at the top of the seating steps as well as the usual extra row at the front of the stage. I stood next to Kirstie in the lighting box at the back of the theatre because of the lack of spare seats. This vantage point is a bit like standing on the bridge of a ship and there's a buzz from feeling part of the cut and thrust of the performance that you don't get when sitting in the audience. It's harder to judge the response from the back, though, and I got the impression that the house was a little muted, although very far from the indifference of the first Friday. John Colborn (Southwest Scriptwriters secretary and treasurer) also felt that the audience reception on 10 November was a bit subdued, but this really didn't put a damper on the evening - it was just a bit mellower than the other nights.

I've given up on the idea that a show's last night is the exciting climax to its run. In the past I've found that the best nights often come earlier in the run and shows tend to fizzle rather than go out with a bang. Salt'n'Sauce definitely went out with a bang insofar that there was a hefty barrage of fireworks near the Alma during the final performance, making me want to yell, 'November the fifth was last week, you morons!' at the belated Bonfire Night celebrants. The heaving house stuck with the show doggedly despite having to put up with the pyrotechnics, an exaggerated mobile phone ring tone sounding in the theatre, and the pounding bass of a disco following the fireworks. Up in the lighting booth again, even I lost the plot, forgetting where we were in the play because of the cacophony outside. If the audience was similarly distracted it soon recovered, though, behaving in the exact opposite way to the house on Tumbleweed Night when it seemed that there were only moments when the audience was on board.

I was keen to videotape extracts of the production to post on this website and didn't want to do this by simply planting a camera at the back of the theatre during a performance as this is both distracting for the audience and the resulting footage is a bit tedious. Sam and I discussed taping the production, agreeing that a key feature of theatre is that it's a live event and filming it detracts from this. Despite this, I feel video coverage is helpful in recalling how the show played - showing how well the dialogue flowed and worked with the stage business, for example - and I also find editing the eventual footage a fascinating process almost akin to rewriting the script. I joked as well that I wanted to have some coverage of the play to include in my South Bank Show! The cast kindly agreed to come in ahead of the final performance to shoot a couple of scenes and I was pleased to reunite some of the crew from the Southwest Scriptwriters Southwest Shorts short films shoot in August for the videotaping - Steve Brown and Jez Toogood operating the cameras and Maria Jannello on sound. I wanted to film the Arthur's Seat scene as this was the one that worked best with audiences across the run and it's very static, making it easier to shoot. I asked Jo to pick another scene that she felt featured her best (as Emily doesn't appear in the Arthur's Seat scene) and she chose Scene Two in which Emily turns up at John and Paul's flat to pick up some gaffer tape from Paul and spends some awkward moments with John before the director returns. We ran the scenes until we had master shots and close-ups for both. I made a start on editing the footage last week and have been enjoying revisiting the show through it.

I gave Sam and the cast DVDs of Festival directed by Annie Griffin as a thank you gift for their work on the production. I saw the film when it came out last year and it almost put me off writing Salt'n'Sauce because it covers similar ground. While Festival does feature characters mounting theatre productions on the Fringe, it centres mostly on stand-up comedians with its climax set at a comedy award ceremony, so I felt eventually that my idea for the play was different enough to be worth pursuing. It might have been helpful to hand out copies of the movie at the start of rehearsals because, having been filmed during the Fringe in 2004, it gives a sense of what Edinburgh in August is like - a reminder for those who have been to the Festival and a taster for those who haven't. I felt that the DVDs made appropriate souvenirs of the production, anyway.

The final fortnight of the Inside Out season featured David Carter's The Voice that Keeps Silent, which I went to see at its penultimate performance. The play's an experimental piece centring on a HIV-positive man and his lover in a series of vignettes set at various times in their relationship which dates back to the 1980s. The production was abstract but interesting and I enjoyed Martin Auckland, Dee Sadler and Julia Gwynne's performances, which were helped along by a cracking punk rock soundtrack. Ann Stiddard's set design was very effective too, with mirrors suspended on both sides of the stage area reflecting the backdrop consisting of a large painting that David Carter worked on daily throughout the run of his play.

The Voice that Keeps Silent's set also accommodated rehearsed readings of the five plays that 'got away' very well. These were staged the weekend after Salt'n'Sauce closed and I made it to the Alma for the readings of Shiona Marton's quirky romantic comedy Cowboys and Campers, and Julian Armistead's Death in the Garden on Sunday, 19 November. I hoped to make it to see the reading of Steve Lambert's Touch the next day (directed by Sam), but, having waiting an hour in the rain for a bus, decided I'd done enough suffering for Steve's art.

In his version of the Four Tops' Walk Away Renee, Billy Bragg says that a love affair is 'just like being on a fast ride at the fun fair / The sort you want to get off because it's scary / And then as soon as you're off you want to get straight back on again', and having a play produced feels a lot like that too. Obviously, a playwright's goal is to get his or her work staged and doing so is a terrific boost, but a production is a rollercoaster ride that's scary, exhilarating and, at times, demoralising too. In the same song, Bragg continues that 'you have to learn to take the crunchy with the smooth' and this is an important survival tip for writers. Salt'n'Sauce's 'crunchier' moments included Tumbleweed Night - although I've since spoken to several people who saw the show on 3 November who have been surprised that the cast and I felt that the performance was a wash-out. Many of those at the Alma on Tumbleweed Night have been as positive about Salt'n'Sauce as those who saw other performances, so maybe the evening didn't go as badly as we thought? It certainly didn't feel too great, anyway - and the knifing from Venue wasn't exactly a fillip! It would be churlish, though, to be inconsolable after the production's success. Apart from the positive reviews on the BBC Bristol website and in the Bristol Evening Post (which I finally got to read following the final performance by tearing down the cutting that was posted on the box office door), the audience feedback forms proved relentlessly positive and the show was the box office hit of the Inside Out season - there was even a rumour that the play outsold all previous productions in Theatre West's nine-year history at the Alma. Yes, having a play put on is like being on a fast ride at the fun fair, but it's one well worth queuing for again once it's over.