Frome Drama Club Newsletter

May/June 2006

OM&M ... 'MAGNIFICENT!'

Philip de Glanville is glowing with pride...

It was Tony Atkinson who said it to me as he and Val emerged into the foyer, visibly moved, after the opening night performance of John Steinbeck's OF MICE and MEN. ..."Just magnificent". And we got a lot of tributes in the same vein, on that and the ensuing nights.

FDC's Spring Production really does seem to have been a hit. We didn't get the full houses which, as always, we had hoped for, but the afternoon performance for local schools was sold out, and the auditorium was respectably full on each of the three evening performances. And I gather from Michael that the show made a reasonable profit, largely because we scrimped and saved a fair bit on set construction.

The really pleasing thing though is that several members took the trouble to email their congratulations, which the cast and crew very much appreciated, and I hope the authors won't mind if I publish extracts 'for the record'...

From Claudia and the Merlin staff:

HUGE congratulations to Philip, and the talented cast and crew, for the stunning production of Mice & Men. A big well done has to go to Martin and Steve also. It really was quite wonderful. It made me feel very proud to be part of the club.
Chris and I agreed it was the best thing we have seen at the Merlin for ages, and I don't think I have heard so many sniffs in the auditorium before!!

From David Riley:

Congratulations to one and all. We had to go because Honor was too tearful to talk - that's an accolade for you...
You need an agreement with the Merlin for eight nights at half price. Then your actors can really enjoy it and perfect their performances. Four performances ain't enough for something that good.

From Alex Webb:

Many congratulations on a splendid show – super set, wonderfully atmospheric lighting, the best stage fire I've ever seen and fabulous attention to detail. Certainly the best performance I've seen Martin give, and Jade was very good too...

and from Michel Hoskinson:

FDC's production........succeeded brilliantly on every level – set, sound, lighting, props, stage management, acting and direction. All who saw it were unanimous in their praise and while most people had their favourite moment I think it would be invidious to single out any one scene or any one person. It really was a team effort without which it would not have been half as good.
This production brought in three more newcomers whose contributions were immense. Many thanks to them, coupled with a plea to remain members so we can see more.
This was a gem of a production: it was a brave and difficult choice but it worked like a dream. My connection with FDC goes back to 1988 and this rates as one of the very best performances I have had the pleasure to watch. The reputation of the club has been greatly enhanced and must surely add to our steadily increasing audience base. Congratulations to all concerned!.

POST-PRODUCTION

Gillie, our Chairman, usually does this bit (and she does it very well too) but she is up to her eyes in coursework and has exams looming and I didn't have the heart to ask her for 1000 words looking back over the Production and thanking everyone who helped put it together, so with your forbearance I'll do it myself. It might help me to get OM&M finally out of my system as well:

CASTING

FDC has always prided itself on having ‘open' auditions, and this was a pretty good example, in that eight blokes turned up to the reading at the end of November last year (including Titch who would never ever accept an on-stage role, but who has been a stalwart backstage over the years) and amazingly all seven of those who put themselves forward for a part got one. I had primed and invited only two key people – Steve (who played Lennie) and Billy (who played Crooks). And I knew that Martin desperately wanted to play George but couldn't make it to the casting evening. There was no one else that night who was right for it (though Titch did a good job reading it for us) and it was reassuring to know that Martin was on hand. That everyone else slotted so neatly into the roles left over might have been a complete fluke, but I felt it boded well.

Just a note about casting though – it is very much in the Club's interests that actors are not ‘pre-selected' for roles by the Director, so as to give everyone a chance, but sometimes you do have to do a bit of lobbying beforehand, if only to ensure that casting the play is possible. Take Steve for instance; I had had my eye on him for some time because he was the only person I had seen in the Frome area who had the physicality to play Lennie, and having seen him in the Merlin pantos the past couple of years I knew he could act. But I don't think we could have gone ahead with the production if he hadn't agreed, in advance, to come and read for it. People like that don't often walk in off the street!

Casting Billy was serendipitous really. I vaguely knew a black actor in Bristol who might have done it, but when Billy walked in to the Granary that evening last summer when Heather and I were helping Will Adcock out with his film, we warmed to him immediately. He blagged that he'd done ‘a bit' of acting (none at all actually, as it turned out) and though he lived in Bristol he thought he wouldn't mind popping over to rehearsals occasionally. He said afterwards that he had heard of this guy Steinbeck and people said he was a pretty good writer, so he thought "why not?" I love that sort of free-wheeling adventurous spirit.

Sometimes you just have to rely on the luck which, they say, favours theatrical efforts. We started rehearsals without having anyone to play Slim and to my amazement and delight after a couple of weeks Felix appeared, carrying his guitar, and said he was ready to try his hand at acting. How does that happen? It's a mystery.

Theatrical magic?

Casting ‘Curley's Wife', paradoxically, was much more difficult because we were spoiled for choice. No fewer than four girls came to the November reading and any one of them would have been fine for the role. Perdie withdrew because she was job-hunting, but Claudia, Jade and Millie all came for a second audition and after a lot of soul-searching I asked Jade to do it, because I felt we, as a Club, needed to see what she could do. And, boy, in the end she showed us, didn't she!

Jade in a shamelessly revealing pose as Curley's Wife

I can't leave ‘casting' without paying tribute to Laurie, who played Candy's dog. We had already had offers of a few dogs, including a firm one from Trixie of her blue collie Rolf, but Rolf was not only still relatively young and frisky, but also very healthy looking and rather pretty. We decided to try and get a bit of publicity out of the search and so we put something in the local papers about a “dog star” and we were inundated with offers from proud owners, eight of whom turned up to a formal audition at the Merlin, with Press photographer in tow.
Most of them, like Rolf, were groomed and gleaming and much too bouncy and the only one with a grey muzzle and a limp decided he didn't like the look of Bryan (‘Candy') and resolutely refused to audition. Bryan, Claudia and I set ourselves up as a judging panel and were just about to announce Geoff Lawson's lean black collie Pele as our choice, when Sarah Jenkins from Berkeley who had brought young Brandy, a beautiful tan and white collie who wouldn't have looked out of place at Crufts, piped up “Oh! I didn't realise you wanted an old dog. I won't be a minute”. She returned with Laurie, straight off the farm and smelling “like hell”, who wheezed and waddled her way over to us and into a place in FDC history.
After the show people wanted to know if we had trained Laurie to cower away from David (‘Carlson') and to hide under the bunk when he tried to take her away to shoot her. Nope. Just natural talent.

David as Carlson with luger and evil intent

REHEARSALS

The rehearsal period went like clockwork; well, it did until the final two weeks anyway, when for 10 long days we lost track of Billy and I was beginning to face up to the awful prospect of recasting ‘Crooks'. In fact I was on the verge of doing so, and had just left a message with a guy in Bath who had played the part recently, when there was a ring at the back door and there was Billy, full of apologies and ready to work.
The cast all gelled immediately, possibly because we spent the first hour or so of the first rehearsal playing theatrical games and getting comfortable with each other, since so few of them had acted together before. It was something I had used at the beginning of Cold Comfort Farm too, for the same reason, and I think it is a really worthwhile exercise. We used the second half of that afternoon blocking most of the ensemble pieces and suddenly we were away. People arrived on time, they started coming with lines learnt, I rarely had to remind anyone of their moves – it was a dream!
I think maybe this is one of the benefits of working with a generally inexperienced cast – nearly half of them had done little or no acting before, and maybe they took their cue from Martin who really led the team by example. His commitment to the whole project was total and his natural talent and good humour seemed to rub off on everyone.
In the final two weeks there were occasional moments when I let my exasperation show – the Crooks scene was still very under-rehearsed and utterly awful at this stage – and Martin overheard one of the cast mutter "It's only a play, for God's sake". He rounded on them, with a flash of contempt. "What do you mean", he snarled, "only a play?"
I must mention and thank Michael, Calum and Heather at this point because all three of them contributed a great deal of time and effort patiently providing coaching for anyone who wanted it, and several did. Calum was particularly helpful in steering James through his role, Heather spent hours with Martin around our kitchen table, and as well as helping Jade and Billy, Michael in particular can take credit for the accents – not, as he would be the first to admit , that they were truly authentic, but the cast (and by and large I think the audience) felt comfortable with them and there was very little jarring. I tore my hair out on a few occasions about the Australia-style rising inflection which infected almost everybody at some stage but in the end I had to admit defeat. It seemed, for some, to be hard-wired into their characters,

Two remarkable performances – Steve as Lennie and Billy as Crooks

SET

I don't have a problem with box sets – lots of the plays we've done recently both needed and deserved one, and I think audiences feel comfortable with them. But they don't allow the imagination to soar, and Of Mice and Men would have been awfully difficult to do if we hadn't abandoned theatrical realism in favour of a freer format.
The idea for the main rostrum was born out of the need for a raised platform, partly to allow for a ‘river' frontage and also to make a fire effect possible. But what I was most pleased about was that it centred the action in the middle of a relatively wide space, an effect which Chris at the Merlin enhanced by rigging the black legs as far back as they would go. This seemed to me to mirror the atmosphere of the play – narrow lives lived out against an enormous backdrop.
I confess I got the idea for the trees from a photo I had seen in a Google search and I was amazed at how well they worked to support both interior and exterior scenes. The front two were made from matched strips of Douglas fir, carefully cut to butt together neatly, and the two upstages trees were single strips with enough of a curve on them to appear almost round. They were very kindly lent to us, along with most of the rocks used to create the river edge, by Don Day who runs the sawmill at Nunney Catch, and the scaffolding poles which held them up were also lent, this time by Frome Scaffolding – a very generous gesture which we much appreciated.
The timber used to construct the big doors upstage, and the bunkhouse table (which Geoff Hunt made) had been in our garden for about 3 years and were nicely worm-eaten, and much of the material for the rostrum was old FDC timber stored at the farm. In fact Alan Woolley (who masterminded the building of the set) didn't have to buy very much wood, thank goodness, though the frames for the bunks he made were all new, You would never have known it by the time Deborah Chisman and her team of ladies had finished distressing and staining them.

Felix as Slim, doing a bit of male bonding against a backdrop of trees

LIGHTING

Chris Samuels has always enjoyed the challenge of an interesting lighting plot but I think he surpassed himself on this production, even though he cheerfully complained that the set was 'a nightmare to light'. His use of colour and break-pattern gobos was inspired and his sensitive adjustment of lighting levels contributed enormously to the atmosphere of the piece.
He and I worked together on the design for the fire, which I thought worked a treat (lights underneath shone through holes cut in the chipboard and were refracted through shards of broken glass amongst the ashes, which gave the illusion of glowing embers). The wood had already been half-burnt, and the stones charred, and the whole lot was soaked in Flamecheck to prevent the thing from really catching light! I had considered getting Denise Gibbons to crawl underneath to operate a smoke machine (and with her caving experience she seemed quite happy to have a go!), but in the end crumbled smoke pellets and tiny slivers of fire-lighter in a tin lid seemed safer and did the trick nicely, though I believe Paula had kittens at the sight of real flames on stage.

Martin as George and Steve as Lennie, by firelight

SOUND

We are so fortunate to have Simon Bowman as our sound engineer. He just loves getting it 'right' and will go to enormous lengths to do so. The secret of a good sound track is to create ambience without being intrusive, except where you want the audience to take notice, and he did the whole thing with such subtlety. Almost all the off stage action and voices were recorded when we spent a happy Sunday morning with the cast down at Vallis Vale, endlessly trying to avoid picking up circling aircraft and distant car doors. There's an extraordinary amount of sound in the real world when you stop and listen and putting it carefully into the background of a theatrical production, even if only subliminally, does heighten the experience.
The thing I was most excited about was the final pistol shot. I had thought it would have to be live, but Simon convinced me that a recording would work just as well, and probably better, because he could add subtle echo and it would support the conceit that they were outdoors. I don't know how many people were even aware of this when Lennie got shot at the end (perhaps it got drowned in the sobbing) but it really did sound 'right'.

"Somebody made a ringer!"

COSTUME

Gillie did a great job with the costumes, with some help from Heather scouring the charity shops in Bath for last minute changes, and Yumiko Bowman who made a lovely 'baker boy' style cap for Lennie.
The wonderful thing about Gillie is that she too will not accept an 'it'll do' attitude and her determination to get everything right certainly paid off, even though Martin in particular had to endure a total rethink at the very last moment. But it wasn't just the costumes themselves – it was the way she insisted that everyone got down and dirty with them, to create a really authentic 'look'. If you'd been at the Merlin before the Dress Rehearsal you might have seen cast members rolling about in flowerbeds to get the dirt and dust in the right places, pouring baby oil onto collars and cuffs, and powdering their costumes with talc. They must have been really unpleasant to put on every night, but they did look marvellously, and suitably, grubby. We were able to use a certain amount of old FDC stock, augmented from charity shops, but the majority of the costumes came from Black Lion and all had to be thoroughly washed and ironed (by Michael, bless him) before they went back.

Didn't anybody have a decent wash in them days?

PROPS & SET DRESSING

One of the things about the production which drew a lot of compliments was our "attention to detail" and, if you want detail, make sure you have Trixie Collin on board. It was she who went to extraordinary trouble to get just the right props and set dressing – buying them on eBay, borrowing them from Steve Vee on Catherine Hill, and making and distressing a good deal of them herself. She even found original 30's bean tin labels on the Heinz website, and though in the end we got Adam Bowman to recreate them from scratch (which he did beautifully) Trixie's determination to get everything 'right' was just the inspiration we all needed to try even harder at every level. And she and Ally ran the backstage Props department with oiled precision – it was lovely to watch them working.

Trixie insisted that Martin carry the cards around in his pocket, to scuff them

HAIR & MAKE-UP

Hair wasn't too much of a problem, especially for the two Steves, though I must pay tribute to Calum ('Curley') who suffered physical and psychological torment growing a moustache during the last few weeks before the show, and to James who must have endured all sorts of ribbing from his classmates when he cheerfully agreed to get his short-back-and-sides crop at the last minute. Bryan just quietly got on with growing his hair and beard for three months – I hardly recognised him all spruced up when he came to the playback evening two weeks after the show. Jade did her own hair and make up and created a real period 'feel' I thought. In her final scene she looked to me every inch the 30's movie star to which Curley's Wife so desperately aspired. Calum was responsible for making all the stage blood (some recipe involving golden syrup and raspberry sauce apparently) and there was plenty of it, neatly concealed in clingfilm wrappers. And Gillie patiently created Lennie's bruises every night during the interval (even on her night off when she got to watch from the front) as well as overseeing the grubbying up of all these rough calloused ranchhands.

The effect of Curley's fists

STAGE MANAGEMENT

I have left this until last because I wanted to thank Alan Woolley in particular for taking this production on and making it work backstage. He led his small but excellent crew with precision (Alex Schenkler, Denise Gibbons and Geoff Hunt, along with Trixie and Ally, Sam Jenkins who looked after Laurie, and Will Adcock who stood in for Geoff on the last night) and they made the whole thing look almost effortless.

The Get-In was a joy, largely because of Alan's organisation and a wonderful team of people who answered Michael's SOS email and turned up to lend a hand. We were all finished by about 5.30 on that Sunday – it was amazing! The Get-Out on the night also went very smoothly and we were partying by about 1130, and enjoying Gillie's glowing thanks and congratulations all round.

As she said that night, it was the team ethos permeating the whole production which made Of Mice and Men such a success – that, and the fact that it is a wonderful play. I so enjoyed directing it, and would like to renew my thanks to every single member of the team. It was inspiring to work with them.
PdeG

And next up, it's the

AUTUMN PRODUCTION

In the last Newsletter I said I was in a bit of a quandary as to whether to choose an Agatha Christie or a Ray Cooney farce for the production in November. However the ensuing playreadings made it quite clear which the members wanted – we thought Murder At The Vicarage was essentially formulaic and in the end rather dull, whilst It Runs In The Family was an exhausting hoot from beginning to end – we were all literally rocking with tears of laughter and sometimes it became difficult to continue reading. One of those really magical FDC evenings. So – IRITF it is then, always assuming we can cast it.

The play is set in a doctor's common room at St Andrew's Hospital – nice simple box set, except that there is a double sash window looking out on a view over London, and the window ledge outside, high above the street, sees a fair bit of hilarious action. There are also quite a few doors, as you might expect.

There is a cast of twelve, with a reasonable gender split (7M, 5F). The main character, around whom the farce revolves, is a rather pompous Consultant Neurologist, Dr Mortimer, who is about to deliver the Ponsonby Lecture to 200 of his fellow neurologists and will probably earn a knighthood for his pains. However, while he is putting the final touches to his speech an old flame of his, Nurse Jane Tate, arrives to announce that their dallying together in the sluice room 18 years ago resulted in a son, Leslie, who is downstairs and desperate to meet his dad. Frantic to hide this catastrophic news from his wife and the hospital authorities, Dr M is forced to invent not one but two non-existent husbands for Jane and to enlist the help of one of his colleagues, the hapless Dr Bonney. Events spiral ever further out of control as the clock ticks on, and the convolutions gather in a Police Sgt, a senile old patient, an assortment of matrons (real or otherwise), a syringe full of Largactil and the costumes for the hospital pantomime...

There will be another reading of the play, with a view to casting, on Monday 12th June upstairs at the Packhorse. Whether you want a part or not do come along and see if it tickles your funny bone.

NEXT YEAR?

We read Stepping Out just this last Monday and had a really good turnout – 16 in all (mainly ladies, as we'd hoped) and several new faces, plus apologies from others interested but who couldn't make it. The consensus seemed to be that we should take the next step (sorry – no pun intended) and arrange tap classes for those wanting either to learn from scratch, or in a few cases to hone skills which may have rusted a little over the years. It seems likely that a cast (9F, 1M) will emerge from these classes over the next few weeks or months, but since the finale of the play requires everyone to have reached quite a respectable standard we envisage that weekly classes will be needed well into next year, and probably up until the production on Nov 2007. Janice Alden, who runs the Dance School on Christchurch St W (just over the road from the Memorial Theatre) is offering to give group lessons, initially on Sunday mornings at 11am (the day may be negotiable in the future) starting on June 4th Cost will be £3.00 per week.
This is a great opportunity to learn a new skill, and get fit, in a group of like-minded cheerful people, so do come along, even if you don't expect a part.

Ages in the cast range from apparently 19 to apparently 40-something. The pianist - Mrs Fraser - doesn't have to dance (though it would be quite fun if she could) but will need to be able to play some basic tunes live. She could be older than the others. The man also has to be able to play the piano – preferably rather fluently. Oh – and we need a mature and fully rounded Afro-Caribbean lady. Any suggestions?

See you on Sunday 4th June!

LUNCH IS ON!

We are delighted to hear that Emily Lewis has now recast 'The Woman' for Stephen Berkoff's one act play Lunch, which was to have been FDC's entry in this year's Merlin Festival.

Beaux Bryant, who has recently moved to Frome, has a background in dance and professional theatre, and is keen to get involved. She will join Mick Finucane, who is playing 'The Man' and rehearsals are starting in earnest for a performance at the Griffin Inn on Sunday 9th July at 6.30pm, as part of the Frome Festival. Box Office 455420 .

FESTIVAL NEWS

Don't forget that FDC is holding a special play reading as part of the Festival and we hope to attract old and new members to this, to read or to listen or both. Alan Bennet's wonderful 60's farce Habeas Corpus seems to be everyone's favourite and we will be reading it in The Packhorse on Monday 10th July, 8pm as usual, and will hope for a good turnout.

In addition two of our members (Claudia Berry and Felix Byrne) are in An Evening With Gary Lineker directed by Martin Dimery at The Memorial Theatre on Friday 7th July at 7.30pm , and Pip Utton is performing his Only The Lonely on Tuesday 11th July at the Merlin Theatre at 7.45pm.

And we see from the Festival Programme that someone (could it be Geoff Hunt and Martin Coat as rumoured?) is planning to stage an off-the-wall production of Hitchcock's Rope on Monday 10th July, to be held at a mystery location... Does this mean they haven't actually booked a venue yet? Or will this be true street/pub theatre in Geoff's inimitable style. And who is acting in it…? Watch this space for news as it happens.

FDC Programme

Sunday 4th June
Tap dancing:
Janice Alden's 11am
£3.00 a session

Monday 12th June
Casting:
It Runs In The Family
by Ray Cooney
The Packhorse, 8pm
Autumn Production

Monday 10th July
Playreading:
Habeas Corpus
by Alan Bennet
The Packhorse, 8pm