I don’t usually bother listening to the programmes which John Peel recorded for the
BBC World Service. They were only half an hour long and the majority of the tracklistings for any given show would be stuff that had been widely heard on other Peel programmes of the period. Two of the tracks Peel played
on this day’s broadcast were by The Fall, so the window for hearing content that you may not have heard before was quite narrow. Nevertheless tracks by
His Royal Fume and
The Tabs were both new to this blog. There was one other new track which made my initial list of selections only to fall from favour:
Skyflyer - Gale - I think what happened here was that I was (and remain) so well disposed towards the sensational Skyflyer banger,
Humanoid, which is one of my favourite tracks from The Comedy of Errors programmes, that the more laidback and digitally scrunched beats of Gale got onto here almost automatically out of deference to Arndt Petcher and Rolf Maier-Bode’s earlier masterpiece. But subsequent listens confirmed for me that I have a very low threshold towards dance tracks which feature heavy use of that sample which sounds like someone is squeezing out the last knockings of a used up bottle of washing up liquid.
The only reason why I included content from this programme is because it went out on the same day as the opening performance of Falmouth Community School’s production of
William Shakespeare’s 1594 farce,
The Comedy of Errors, staged at
Pendennis Castle and which remains unique among the shows I’ve appeared in as it is the only one I have ever performed in which ran from Monday to Wednesday only, with no performances on either a Friday or Saturday.
The opportunity to perform in the play came as a complete surprise.
I had just finished performing in Oliver! at the start of April and was preparing for the rigours of my GCSEs when the director of Oliver!, Jane Stevenson mentioned that the school was staging the play and that it would be directed by her husband, Mike who had given assistance with
a number of the rehearsals for Oliver! Was I interested in taking a role? Once I knew that rehearsals would not clash with exams, I eagerly accepted and was given a script by a girl in my class, Michelle Rogers, who was studying GCSE Drama and was playing one of the lead roles in the show. She dropped out when rehearsals started though and was replaced by Lisa Garrison, who had played Widow Corney in Oliver! and who was in the year below me.
It was a sluggish start, I was only needed once a week and in my first week of rehearsals I played a different role from the one I ended up in, again due to someone dropping out. The cast was a mix of Lower Sixth Form A-Level Drama students, some GCSE Drama students and a smattering of people from Years 10 & 11. The show was put on in order to give those studying the subject more of an opportunity to perform different types of plays in front of an audience, and participation was by invite only, so as much as I’d been a bit unhappy with my performance as Mr. Sowerberry in Oliver!, I’d clearly made some sort of positive impression.
The Comedy of Errors was a perfect choice of play to do as a first attempt at playing Shakespeare. Indeed, I would recommend it as a play to take anyone who doesn’t like Shakespeare to. The principle of “Shakespearean comedy” has not travelled well through the ages due to the fact that 16th Century humour has become somewhat arcane for the best part of 200 years at least. But the strength of The Comedy of Errors is that it marries a brisk and comprehensible story of two sets of identical twins unknowingly causing chaos for each other, their loved ones and business associates by utilising farce, slapstick, mistaken identity, comic confusion to wonderfully concise effect - the play is Shakespeare’s shortest in terms of running time. And even its one extended piece of verbal humour in which one of the twins describes an obese cook that he. or rather his unknown of twin, is married to is brilliantly written as Dromio of Syracuse describes to his master, Antipholus of Syracuse, his “wife’s” appearance using the terms of the atlas:
Dromio of Syracuse: She is spherical. I could find out whole countries in her.
He duly lists which parts of her body correspond to different countries, all of which leads to a
cracking pay off line:
Antipholus of Syracuse: Where stood Belgium, the Netherlands?
Dromio of Syracuse: Oh sir, I did not look so low!
I was cast in two roles. I had one line as a jailer in Act 1 before returning in Acts 4 & 5 as the Second Merchant who spends his time having people arrested for not paying him for goods and nearly getting into sword fights with Antipholus of Syracuse. Happily, he is able to join in the festivities at the end of the play when all is resolved. The Second Merchant was a fun part to play though I was guilty of playing it in what I thought of as “Shakespearean” style at times and my reading of the verse was a bit erratic at times with sudden shifts into fury and odd, staccato delivery at moments which I thought at the time were impressive, but which in retrospect were quite jarring and un-necessary. It gave the opportunity for some great scenery chewing especially in the aforementioned near sword fight in which I rang full value out of the line, “I dare! And do defy thee (draws sword) for a villain!” The popularity of this line and my delivery grew as the rehearsals progressed, so that by the time we got to the stage, I could, out of the corner of my eye, detect actors who weren’t in the scene crowding into the entrance way at the back of the main hall of the castle so they could see it each night.
There were a few other firsts for me with this show. It was the first experience I ever had of
acting in the round and to date it’s the only Shakespeare play I’ve done which was presented in something close to Elizabethan period costume. As the Second Merchant, I was kitted out in a plum grey tabard and cloak with a stove pipe hat adorned with a peacock feather. Indeed, every character had their own colour scheme and Melanie Hambly as the
Courtesan had to squeeze into skirt which billowed due to plastic struts, giving her the appearance, from the waist down of a rather seductive
umbrella. Our distinctive looks were topped off by a uniform make up job of white face paint and clown red paint around our mouths. We looked like the cabaret at a cosplay convention of
Jokers. Part of this was deliberate given that the Dromios are often styled on clowns. Indeed our two Dromios both wore clown ruffle collars and multi-coloured wigs as part of their look.
The play worked its magic, including on those who the idea of an Elizabethan farce may have been a tough sell. Pendennis Castle had hostel accommodation built onto it and on the last night, a rumour went round that the hostel was housing a group of American teenagers who were members of a
reform school. We had seen them around the grounds while rehearsing at the castle on the Sunday
and on our arrival for the performances. For the final performance, the reform school kids watched our performance and I will always remember the enthralled, delighted looks on their faces as the action played out in front of them.
The cast bonded well as the show got closer and the production week was a lovely experience. Several weeks after the show, we met up for a party at which we were able to watch the video. It was a good night out but my main takeaway from it was that I’d developed a crush on H, who played Dromio of Ephesus. It came about because she laughed at my jokes all evening. As simple as that. We had got on well during the play, but this night we got on like a house on fire, though nothing happened, I was far too unworldly to try and sneak a kiss from her, but I thought there was something cherishable about her considering that she found my impression of
Carl Wayne’s dance moves as observed on Sounds of the 60s earlier that year to be hysterical. Thus I spent most of that summer trying not to panic about GCSE results, all while getting thrashed in
cricket matches and moping around over a crush I could seemingly do very little about, but which followed me at every turn given that H worked at WH Smith, a shop I visited with great regularity when I was 16, and then when I went to see my friend, Martin appearing in the musical,
Charlie Girl at Falmouth Arts Centre, I was astonished to see her name in the cast list as I read the programme before curtain up. Convinced that fate was trying to tell me something, I plucked up the courage to phone her and ask her on a date at the end of August 1992. She said “Yes”...and in a few posts time, I will tell about the sliding doors moment that this proposed date turned out to be and how it links to John Peel making a rare TV appearance in 1992. Before that though, we have some appendices to work through. Tracks from this rehearsal period which were not originally available when I wanted them, but which have turned up subsequently.
