Monday, 30 October 2006

Overture and Beginners

by Tim Massey

Following Saturday's rehearsals I feel that the cast has nowhere to go except to perform the play to an audience. Sam ran the show three times at the weekend and picked the actors up on a few points, but I didn't have anything to add. The only thing left to practise is cueing and timing the lines in response to audience reactions, which is obviously impossible to do in an empty theatre. Jo said she thought, 'Oh no, they're not laughing!' when performing to just me and Sam - the only response from me a little crunching of crisps and the occasional chuckle (I'm not given to guffawing even when I haven't heard it all before). Last week's developments include a couple of judicious cuts, which I'm gently kicking myself for not having made while rewriting, and the script now plays at around 55 minutes.

I stayed on after rehearsals to see the final performance of Sarah Curwen's Eggshell Blues. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where a virulent strain of avian flu has wiped out most of the population, the play featured Paul as a young ornithologist fleeing the encroaching epidemic. He stumbles into a commune of outbreak survivors who have genetic immunity to the bug, and meets a recent young female arrival (Julia Gwynne) who is being groomed by her mentor (Dee Sadler) as a potential child-bearer for the commune's charismatic leader - the aim being to repopulate the Earth with immune individuals. The play's theme reminded me a little of Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and was well performed with an inventive set featuring two washing lines - one for the clothes of the compound's executive and one for garments reclaimed from epidemic victims. The young compound inmate and ornithologist fall for each other and, in a very funny scene, flirtatiously act out the courtship rituals of various species of birds.

I steered clear of the Alma during Sunday's get-in - other commitments and I'm pretty useless at all that practical stuff, anyway - so my first glimpse of Catherine's set was when I arrived in the space around seven this evening. The cast was nearing the end of a run-through and I stepped into the netherworld behind the tabs (black curtains surrounding the stage) and watched the performance through a gap in them. Salt'n'Sauce is my third play produced at the Alma, but I've not watched any of them from behind the scenes before, so it was a novel first take on the set. Jo waved to me from the other side of the narrow black-drape backstage corridor when she made her exit in the penultimate scene, and I bobbed about trying to get a better view of the action through the chink. The set consists of a number of flats with a greyscale block pattern, which looks a lot like Edinburgh's stonework. The pattern is repeated on the floor where it also resembles the thousands of discarded handbills that litter the streets during the Festival Fringe. Lit for the final scene in the Indian restaurant, the set looked very effective even from my limited vantage point.

Sam had scheduled the dress rehearsal for 8.30pm (the show's starting time) and I sat in the theatre talking to Alison Comley and Ann Stiddard until lights up, trying to remember people to thank on the credits slip to be handed to the audience. I watched a lot of the dress rehearsal through my camera - Ian Wilmot, the official photographer was covering the show, but I wanted some of my distinctive grainy and blurry pictures as a memento - and the view through the lens was good. It was exciting to see the show really come to life - the transformation from advanced rehearsal to a full dress has impressed me ever since doing shows at junior school. I was buoyed-up by the rehearsal and convinced that the play works in performance by it. My feeling at the end of the evening was the same as on Saturday - the show now needs an audience.