Health and Safety

As D-Day approaches (have you booked your tickets yet?) I feel I must mention Felicity who has been beavering away in the wardrobe with Mrs Cavendish. Acting, cooking, pilates, self help workshops, costume design and dressmaking - there really is no end to the girl's talents! We did encounter a slight hiccup in proceedings as our communal sewing machine had not been serviced for several years. The needle required replacing but Felicity just couldn't get it out. Anyway, good old Gordon came to the recue and showed Felicity how, with a few quick twists of the wrist, it comes off in a couple of seconds. As I pointed out to him, he hadn't had it off in ages which would explain why it was so very stiff. At this point Audrey rushed out of the room screeching hysterically.

I really do worry about that woman.

So, machine fixed and costumes well under way. Although, we did suffer a minor set back. Let me just say - when giving vital statistics to the costume department, certain cast members really would benefit from attending Felicity's class on Body Dysmorphia.

Everything else is now rattling along at a fair old pace but there are still one or two things that need licking into shape. Last night's rehearsal highlighted one scene in particular - the dance routine involving Thelma Greenwood and Sylvia Frobisher.Oh dearie, dearie me! Thelma seems to think she's the reincarnation of Margot Fonteyn whilst poor old Sylvia is about as graceful as a giraffe on an ice rink..... in a wind tunnel (could the director of our Christmas Extravaganza, "South Pacific on Ice", please take note?). I fear it's the most serious case of miscasting since that very odd Mr Polanski put Pamela Anderson and Arnold Schwarzenegger together in the title roles of his disaster that was "Romeo and Juliet....Judgement Day".

I have to say that all our sympathies lay with Thelma as Sylvia continually trampled her underfoot (the dancing elephants scene from Fantasia springs to mind). That was until the moment when Thelma pirouetted with her arms flailing about wildly and caught poor Sylvia a cracker across the face with her open hand. It knocked her out cold and we had to prevail upon the services of a passing vet on call. As Gordon will tell you, Thelma is an incredible slapper.

All things considered, I'm very pleased with the way things are progressing. The odd little obstacle merely serves to re-enforce our Dunkirk-like spirit. In fact, as our director keeps saying: "There's nothing I like better than when we all come together."

Sleepless nights

No, not caused by the production, as of course that is moving along very nicely now that Thelma is finally book down and knows her words. However, it is fair to say that misfortune seems to be closing in on me from all directions!

Firstly, one of my closest girlfriends (a mover and shaker at Westminster) has suddenly found herself with a lot of spare time on her hands. An incident I wont elaborate on now. My Mortimer has never got on with her husband Dickie, so I made a flying solo visit to "The Smoke" to comfort her.

Unfortunately some undesirables have moved into our apartment block. Consequently my mission of mercy was shorter than anticipated as I got no sleep at all due to the terrible noises made by the man on top of me. This continued the next day as he and his friends re-enacted some sort of Cup Final in the communal corridor and kept banging their balls on my back door. On returning home I was horrified by the devastation caused by Mortimer's botched DIY attempts. The hideously tacky doorbell he had installed was really a step too far and I fail to see what he thought was so funny about the whole situation. I was merely asking him to screw my knockers back on immediately! It took me over 3 hours to clean the house up but it was the dog mess that I found particularly hard to swallow.

To top it all, I searched high and low for my laptop so I could update my blog. It was nowhere to be found.

Yesterday morning everything became painfully clear when I answered my front door. I was greeted by The Vice Squad holding said laptop as Mortimer attempted to make a quick exit through the downstairs cloakroom window - I've kept telling him he needs to lose weight!

It would seem Mortimer and Dickie have more in common than he thought!

Apologies

I can't believe that a week has flown by since I last updated this blog. They are wonderful things, but it's so easy to forget about them and if you forget about them for too long, the readers forget about them too. So I hope you are still there, or this will be a complete waste of my time.

We have our first runthrough of the full play this evening and we have started to use props on a regular basis. Unfortunately we don't always have the right prop, so we have to make do a little. For instance, a harmonica for a cigarette lighter. And an inflatable sausage for a bomb. Seriously, I'm not making this up.

I'm afraid I had yet another run in with a certain member of the cast earlier in the week when she flounced in 20 minutes late for rehearsal without a care in the world. It was possibly a good job I got there first, as you could see Sylvia starting to boil. You can always tell when she's narked, because she starts going red in the face and becomes very, very quiet. At this point, it is usually wise to leave the room. As, in fact, Thelma did, for her own safety.

We were pleased to have our lady President, Dame Viv, with us at the last rehearsal in the role of prompt. We did need to call on her one or two times (not me, obviously, but one expects better from Audrey). David was a little worried after rehearsal about the amount of time Dame Viv was laughing because Murder At Checkmate Manor is not a comedy. Gordon says he went through the script with a fine tooth comb and found just four laughs.

Mrs Cavendish is having great fun trying to sort out the wardrobe and keeps interrupting us mid-flow to get us to go to another room to try on this, that and the other. Mind you, trying it on is something that comes easily to Gordon. I'm sure he kept trying to peep in; amazing the number of times he had to go to the loo while certain members of the cast were in their undies.

Calm down, dear

I have never seen so many people so lost for words at the same time as at the last rehearsal. We were rehearsing a scene leading up to the song and dance I referred to last week between Sylvia (as Inspector O'Reilly) and Thelma (as Daphne). It's a very short, slightly romantic scene between the two characters and there has been an obvious attraction between the two characters building throughout the play. The scene culminates in the following exchange:

Daphne: My head's in the clouds and I'm floating light as a feather.
Inspector: Come back down to earth and tell me if you'll be my steady girl.
Daphne: Oh yes, Lionel, yes, yes.

The scene, to my mind, was working out quite nicely, until David asked Thelma to put a little more into it. The next thing you know, Thelma was almost re-enacting THAT scene from When Harry Met Sally and wrapping her legs around Sylvia's waist. Poor Sylvia didn't know where to put herself. Gordon suddenly started taking more of an interest in rehearsal at this point, however, and Glenn (sound effects) started filming it with his mobile phone.

Now we all know that, in the play, Sylvia is taking a man's part (not for the first time). But really, this was quite unnecessary and leads me to wonder quite where Thelma's true leanings lie. I mean, we know she's been having difficulties with husband Malcolm, but perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye? If not, it's possibly the best bit of acting I've seen her do.

And I've just heard from Mrs Newman in the box office that she's sold three tickets this morning. That's pretty good at this stage of the game, but we could do with shifting one or two more to beat the record set by our last production. So do give her a call on 01242 522852, won't you?

Farndale's Got Talent

I'm drawing a veil on the recent debacle concerning Gordon and David and wish to use this blog to vent forth a little on something not really connected to our current show but has really got my dander up.

All this fuss about this Britain's Got Talent programme. I have to say that I haven't actually watched a lot of it. Probably about an hour all told because I constantly find myself shouting at the television about the amateurishness of it all. Some of the performances I saw were really poor - and I'm talking about people who got through to the late stages, not just the rejects. And don't even get me started on precocious children bursting into tears because they forgot their words (not that I can imagine what that is like as it has never happened to me) to get a second chance. It was like Violet Elizabeth Bott in the Just William books ("I'll scweam, and scweam and scweam"). Grow up, dear. Mind you, I blame the mothers.

I also think some of the - admittedly few - ladies on the show could also have dressed themselves far better than they did, but I suppose they take their lead from that Amanda Holden woman. And can you believe that over 18 million people watched that drivel? I think that is a sad indictment of our society. And now that tedious Big Brother thing is coming back on. I mean, dear God, what lowest common denominator rubbish that is. Thank goodness for the good old BBC occasionally showing some programmes that require an audience to have an IQ of over 45 to appreciate them (I gather Dame Judi is making a Cranford Christmas special - hurrah!). I believe they are also filming the RSC's latest production of Hamlet but that will only get decent ratings because of that Dr Who chap being in it.

I think the point I am trying to make is that there is a lot of home-grown talent that doesn't get onto television and therefore isn't supported as well as it should be. It's not as if some drama group could go on that programme and present an excerpt from a play, is it? That's the beauty of live theatre. There's a lot of talent and entertainment on your own doorstep, but you need to make a small effort to go and see it, rather than just sitting down on your sofas and waiting for it to pop up on your goggle boxes. Like Godot, you will wait and it will never come. And no doubt that last sentence will be lost on most people.