22. GOLDEN ASS – FULL (KIND OF) REVIEW.....

I say full review, but of course I did not see a good half of the play on account of being hidden in the dark waiting to go one for my own bits -‘waiting in the dark waiting to go on for my own bits’ I should mention, is now quite high on my official list of ‘things that make me feel warm and cozy’.

I heard all of it though, even from back stage, which means at the very least every one was speaking clearly enough, which in itself is something you wouldn’t have got very good odds on early in the piece. In fact, you wouldn’t have got very good odds on very much at all if you’d passed the hat around after the 1^st or 2^nd (or possibly even the 10^th) rehearsal.

Which makes it even more awesome that it turned out so.....awesome.

There is going to be some bias from this point on. There will also be no names – which is unfair to a lot of people who do in fact have names and certainly deserve to have them associated with all the nice things I am about to say – but I still have not forgotten that this Blog is on that internet thingy and that anyone and his dog can read what is on the aforementioned internet (assuming the dog is several orders of magnitude smarter than my own dog who is even as I type barking furiously at some wallaby she cannot see and very possibly does not even exist) which means a modicum of circumspection is warranted.

I was going to change the names but it would just confuse Mary (name changed) when I changed her name to Amy (name never existed) or Amethyst (name from Nimbin)....so I didn’t.

In no particular order then.

WRITING AND DIRECTION: It’s easy to underplay the importance of this kind of thing I suspect, but without both being firmly in place I suspect you can put Meryl Streep on the stage and it’s still going to end up pants. In this case the script was particularly well suited to providing parts suitable for everything from the kid who walked on and off without saying anything, to quite long and involved speeches for the more heavily invested. It also played equally well to the adults and kids who turned up to watch it (according to the people I spoke to) which is no mean feat.

THE SET: The construction of sets is one of the things I always liked most about going to the theatre and this one was a doosy. In one quite small area they managed to build a house, a pub, a hill (including a path down from the hill) and locations for 3 different tradesmen to school the three daughters after they had been framed by the goat and unfairly kicked out of home. There were hinges and swinging bits and lifting bits and turn this bit into a different bit by moving this bit...bits. It was brilliant.

THE CREW (INCLUDING KID WRANGLERS): There were a lot of kids involved in the play....a lot. Some of them had the attention span of....well....kids. Despite this, the Team of adults (and I specifically include the two lads, still at school, who were on the crew and performed brilliantly throughout) tasked with getting them on and off, at the right time, into the right bit of light, with enough food in them to stave off hypoglycaemic collapse, in the right clothes AND then off again in reverse order, did it all without incident and without flinging any of the children off the set’s many quite high bits (though I suspect some were at times tempted).

Add to that all the usual bits and pieces that have to be done to make something like this work (catering, tickets, PR, set up, clean up, bar and on and on and on). The term ‘amateur’ starts to seem more than a little inaccurate.

My particular apologies to the 'Costume Genius' for the unprovoked head whacking she got on the last night (though to be fair she totally stepped into it Your Honour...)

THE KIDS: I have a suspicion that kids fall into one of two camps when it comes to involvement in drama. They either will not touch it with a ten foot barge pole or they are totally into it – like our lot. So while there were many issues involved with the management of so much underage talent, nerves did not seem to be one of them.....even when it sometimes should have been. They were fearless, enthusiastic and talented and if you ever get a chance to tap into some of that you would be an idiot not to take it.

THE (SLIGHTLY YOUNGER) ADULTS: There were a couple of the....youth participants, who would no doubt hit me repeatedly over the head with a stick if they thought I was describing them as kids. So I won’t. I say to (insert name), (insert name) and let’s not forget (insert name) – you guys were tops.

THE (SLIGHTLY OLDER) KIDS: There were only 3 adults in the play. Both the other two had a lot more experience at this than I have and made it a lot easier for me to say yes when I was asked if I wanted to be in it. The old warning goes – ‘Do not work with children or animals (or children dressed as animals)’ – we laugh at the fear and scoff openly at the risk.

MY WIFE AND CHILD: Not only let me do it, but did so with enthusiasm (barring some impatience from my 7 year old on the subject of stupid accents). And it took up a lot of time. Sorry about that.

As I say – amateur doesn’t really cut it.

NEXT: Something slightly less self indulgent?