Archives - April 2011

KINDLY LEAVE THE STAGE
by John Chapman

Produced by Mike Liassides

THE PLAY

Contemporary comedy, set in a flat in Hampstead.
The play starts normally enough, with Charles and Madge having just witnessed a blazing row between their hosts Rupert and Sarah over dinner. Rupert announces his intention of getting a divorce and starts packing his possessions into a large trunk. He and Sarah bicker over which will get the services of Charles - their joint solicitor - until Madge announces she would be happy to resume legal work, as their children are now grown up, and will represent Rupert. Just then, Sarah's mother, Mrs Cullen, arrives unexpectedly, having had a spot of car trouble nearby. She is quite pragmatic about the news...

...until Rupert's lines go completely astray and he rudely refuses all prompts, leaving the others to pick up the pieces of the play they are performing. The reason for this, as he quickly announces is that his real wife, Madge, is having an affair with Charles - which he only found out after the matinee, when they retired to Madge's dressing-room between shows. After demanding details of the affair and ridiculing Charles' reputation as a serious Shakespearian actor, Rupert drags Angela the prompt on stage and demands she fetch his bottle of whisky from backstage. She refuses, but Sarah goes instead: it transpires, in fact, that Sarah is secretly in love with Rupert and has spent some time in his dressing-room, too. With all the rest of the stage crew down at the pub, Angela has no way of getting the curtains safely closed, so the cast has to labour on towards the interval. Things get slightly more surreal when the theatre's duty nurse joins them on stage, having responded to Mrs Cullen's appeal for a doctor to help Rupert. At that point, Rupert decides he wants to kill Charles. His first threat, using a prop gun, is not terribly effective, but then he adopts a prop paperknife which is demonstrably capable of causing damage. To avoid his being stabbed, Madge ushers Charles into the trunk and closes the lid - just as, finally, the curtain operator gets to his post and draws them shut.

After the interval, in the mistaken belief that the audience might have left, Angela has the curtains reopened. Charles is still hiding in the trunk, something that Rupert is finding quite amusing. In the middle of the ensuing argument, Sarah grabs him for a passionate and extended kiss, something that throws Rupert a little and allows Madge a counter-claim of his own infidelity. Charles then inadvertently gives the cue which Edward Frobisher has been waiting for. Edward is an aging Shakespearian actor - famous for once playing King Lear - with a bit of a drink problem and no idea what has occurred on stage. His agent is in the audience, so, when he bursts on stage as Sarah's father the cast hesitantly try to resume the play proper for his sake. That is made somewhat difficult by one of the characters being in a trunk, and a nurse whom Edward does not remember being in the script sitting at the table. It doesn't help that Rupert's real whisky is freely available - eventually, baffled by events and alcohol, Edward launches into a flashback and delivers chunks of King Lear instead, to which Charles cannot help responding and finally emerges from the trunk. In the end, Edward is escorted off by the nurse to go for a lie down.
Unfortunately, Charles again lets slip Edward's cue and the latter comes back on and starts that scene again. The cast again try to play along with him, except for Rupert, whose patience is by now exhausted. the nurse once more takes Edward off, and Rupert resumes his argument with Madge. Just as it peaks with Rupert about to stab Charles, Edward returns. The nurse has finally managed to explain what has happened and Edward is furious about the damage to his career. He gets sidetracked back into Lear, though, before passing out. Madge and Sarah have a blazing row over which one of them is more guilty of infidelity, prompting yet another flashback from Edward. Charles finally stands up to Rupert and tells him the truth about his somewhat poor acting. In response, Rupert insists they start the play again, so he can try it a different way: this turns out to be a hugely over-the-top pastiche of Shakespearian styles, aided by an equally grandiose Sarah. Edward takes offense at this mockery and threatens to kill Rupert: in intervening, Charles provokes Rupert into starting a fight. As everyone, including the prompt, rushes to break it up, the stage crew come back from their second stint at the pub and start the curtain call routine. The curtains re-open on the continuing fight, but, stage veterans that they all are, everyone stops to take their bow. A little hesitantly, the Nurse Brown and Angela do likewise, only to be told off by Edward for doing so...

...as the curtains start to close again, for the final time, and the fight between Rupert and Charles resumes.

FROM THE GROUP

I said in the Production Diary that it was quite outstanding to see characters coming to the fore so early in rehearsals, and I was extremely pleased to see them continue to develop throughout. Although the play itself is a fairly simple premise, it requires everyone to clearly present at least two different and believable identities, depending on whether they are supposed to be in or out of character. That's not the simplest of things, but the cast did it - and I don't say this lightly - brilliantly.
It does help that the play is beautifully written, with sharp, witty dialogue and a fair bit of action to keep things moving along, so it has been enjoyable to watch and (I'm reliably informed) to rehearse. It is quite a short piece, too, so the schedule wasn't particularly demanding - something of a refreshing break after a number of much longer shows.

The staging itself is quite basic, as written, but we had to simplify it further due to a shortened set build weekend. I decided it could just as easily be set in a garden scene, so we reused our backdrop from "...Earnest" and kept construction to a minimum. The end result was rather pretty and came across as well as could have been hoped.

All in all, I thought it was an excellent chance for the actors to showcase their skills in a genuinely funny play, which they duly did. The results, I think, reflect very highly on them - and, to be honest, required very little guidance from me!

It was nice to debut another new member, too, with Bethan taking to the boards for the first time as well as doubling as the real prompt. Thanks go to everyone involved, though, as it really was a flawless production run. My only regret was that audience numbers weren't as high as they could have been: it deserved a somewhat wider viewing, in my opinion. Still, those who did attend made plenty of noise and left happy, so I don't think I'll complain too much...

Mike - Producer

The Production Diary

(Click To View)