Confessions of a Pie Thrower

Maybe it’s the big shoes and red nose that gets the heart beating a little faster.  Exponents of the baggy-trousered bicycle grip love dressing up as a clown in greasepaint and, sometimes, engaging in clown-like activities such as pie-throwing, playing with balloons or seltzer-spraying.

The pantomime begins when Spanky the Clown wants to play with his rubber chicken.  ’He’s behind youuuuu!’ I hear you scream

It never rains, it pours.

Next up in my pantheon of stardom is John Altman, best-known as Nasty Nick Cotton from out of off of off of EastEnders.

Where are the little gems? Behind you!!!

I’d been meaning to mention the panto at Stevenage and John has forced my hand. So there I am in Tesco getting some bits for my son’s birthday party and who’s that inspecting the lettuce – my new best pal John. He’s playing the lead in Aladdin at the Gordon Craig Theatre, cultural beacon of Stevenage and the one landmark you could pick out from the train if you were just passing through.

Must be opening night soon. So are they putting John up in a swanky hotel somewhere nearby (the Ibis is perilously close) or have they found him a nice place to rent for a month? My money’s on the latter.

Checking a YouTube interview, John says he’s staying up in Henlow – that’s about 20 minutes away. Still reckon it’s a house.

In the meantime, you can keep up with rehearsals with this fascinating behind-the-wall, fly-on-the-scenes video-blog!

What do you mean people are blaming the player for cheating and not the referee for not spotting it? What the hell is going on?

Are we seriously asking players to be responsible for their own actions? Is that the kind of future we want for football?

Don’t we all want to see a world where only the match officials are responsible for our players’ indiscretions, our manager’s mistakes and our team’s shortcomings? Without them to blame we would all have to face up to the reality that our team isn’t the best in the world and that we don’t always get shite refs. Is that what we want!? Is it?

Vote NO on proposition rematch.  

TEAM OF THE WEEK: Your Nan (77)

FLUNK OF THE WEEK: TEAM BACON (29)

Hello all, yes the international break is over and here is the long awaited fantasy football update to get you back in the mood.

Nobody seemed the least bit bothered that Mr Beard was in fact a cartoon character.

Jamie Forsyth put another award in his treasure trove after he saw his team pick up Team of the Week. The excellent form has been credited to a breakthrough training regime by a Mr Bobby Beard. With a wooden leg and a parrot on his shoulder B.Beard cut an impressive figure as he hosted a press conference to talk about his new technique “Avast me hearties! I’ve caaarrrm cross seven seas to whip these sorry lubbers into shape. When I saw these bilge rats I nearly lost me sea legs such a sorry sight were they. I had them up the riggin’, sweeping the deck and manning the sails to get these scurvies to be proper pirates men.” Mr Beard’s influence has extended to the training ground which has seen a radical overhaul with a full model ship being built in the club’s swimming pool, complete with a plank for any mutinous members of the squad. Under pressure from the press about the efficacy of such techniques manager Jamie Forsyth said despite the unusual methods the proof had been in the results; “He has come highly recommended by Arsene Wenger and if it’s good enough for Arrrrrsenal then it’s good enough for us” he countered. 

Warning: Not Suitable for Footballers

A team bonding exercise backfired this week as Owen Williams saw his promising start to the season take a turn for the worst. With the pantomime season upon us Williams thought it would make a great treat for the lads to go and see a good old panto starring the Chuckle Brothers. Clearly the experience did not have the desired effect with his team picking up their first Flunk of the Week. “How on earth could I have predicted what happened.” Asked an exasperated manager “I knew something was up the minute the game kicked off and traditional one twos became five sixes.” One fan described a typical interchange between Team Bacon players, “I heard Evra shout to Petrov when he was in possession “Man on!” to which Petrov responded “oh no there isn’t” and by the time the Evra had said “Oh yes there is” we had lost the ball. I must have seen this happen at least a dozen times.” Didier Drogba was quick to defend his team mates’ actions “What a lot of people don’t realise is that most of the players have never seen anything like that before. That show really moved us and really meant a lot to some of the players. There was this one scene where one of the Chuckle Brothers, Barry I think it was, no Paul, no Barry, anyway he said “to me” then Paul, or was it Barry, he said “to you” then Barry said “to me” and it just carried on like that. It was like poetry, ‘to me, to you’ is basically the underlining philosophy of football.”  

Cassas

For those of you that haven’t already you should check out the new All At Sea podcast.

Broadway the symbol

Broadway is the street in NY that has come to symbolize live theater entertainment and musicals everywhere. Today the area, known to tourists and theater-goers, stretches from W.41st Street, where the Netherlander Theater is found, up to W. Only 4 theaters are located physically on Broadway, the Marquis at 46th Street, the Palace at 47th Street, the Winter Garden at fiftieth Street and the Broadway at 53rd. All of the other legit homes are located west or east of this twelve block stretch.
Broadway Stars.

By the 1830’s America was exporting stars to Europe. The 1st notable Yankee actor to make a successful tour was Edwin Forrest, who at nineteen, had played Iago to Edmond Kean’s Othello. Forrest’s 2nd tour of the UK, in the following decade didn’t fare also. Though the interruption of his tour was a private feud with a British actor, its results were well made public in the american Press and his return to the american stage was received with populist fervor.

Broadways first marquis.
The theater was on Madison Square at the crossing of Broadway and 5th Avenue at W. 23rd Street. The Flatiron Building now occupies the site. By midway through the following decade, the street blazed with electric signs as each theater announced its shows and stars in white lights. By the turn of the 20 th Century the street had a totally different look, with as much as sixteen theaters on Broadway itself and many others located on the side streets or other avenues. Broadway was much more than a mere 12 blocks. It started at 13th Street and wound its way a mile and a half up the Avenue to 45th Street, ending in the heart of Long acre Square. This first decade of the century also saw the development of many theaters, most significantly the New Amsterdam on 42nd Street in 1903, along with 4 others in that very same year, that are still standing today.

Our Broadway.

the first decade of the 20th Century was both dull and transformational in the history of our Broadway Musicals. The seeds of that transformation go back to 1882, and the development of The Madison Square Theater at 24th Street. David Belasco, who had the excellence of appearing on stage with another unknown child, Maude Adams, in San Francisco in 1877, was shortly to become a playwriter, theater owner and builder. The 1st sign of the alteration occurred when producer Rudolf Aronson decided to build a theatre of his own. At the time, theatres were concentrated between Union Square and 24th Street.

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Bit of an information gap occurred here – sorry about that.

Who knows if anyone’s actually looking anyway!

Anyway, just in case, thought I’d report that we’re in mid-rehearsal for my latest play ‘Dark Deeds at St Trynians’ – a ripping comic homage to a certain type of infamous girls’ boarding school. The kind of place where discipline is a dirty word, and smoking, drinking and gambling aren’t on the curriculum – but aren’t exactly frowned on either.

Here we find the leggy sirens of the Sixth Form and the ink-stained, brawling wildcats of the Fourth Form embroiled in rival shady schemes of kidnap and extortion. Cunning, dissolute, and crooked, the girls are capable of any excess. And the staff aren’t much better. But they all need to save St Trynians from the dastardly machinations of The Ministry of Schools, which is set on closing down this hotbed of educational anarchy. In a riotous production, brimming with music, mayhem and jolly hockey sticks, the girls fight the Ministry, their teachers, the local police force, and each other.

More details (and online ticket sales) on the Theatre Workshop Coulsdon website www.twcoulsdon.org.uk

Thanks.

Richard

Drowning in this emptiness of thought

Like a pantomime lost of words

A mind’s tongue that’s in decay

Silence resonates but is never heard

Suffocating in this dearth of muse

With a lung that’s in full collapse

Appendages turn blue and violet

With lack of breath;

Resuscitate, resuscitate

Unlock this mind in mute

Set free all that is chained and imprisoned

And let ink flow through these veins once more

Four performances over four nights and the audiences loved us!! However, I forgot a couple of lines on Friday so was not happy!! I get sooo nervous before going on stage, it’s always a huge relief when a performance is over. I’m convinced that memory when you get to my age, 62, depends on how much sleep you get and on Thursday night sleep did not come easily.

Next performance is in Venice, would you believe, in a pantomime mid-January. Really looking forward to it. Cinderalla. Three days of rehearsals and three days of performances, always to a packed house, apparently…and it’s in English.

Now sitting in a cafe in Bristol with an espresso and my laptop…working.

This is my first blog, so I’ll keep it simple. Last night was the dress rehearsal for Silhouette, the play I am in that starts tonight. I play Marting Powell who’s an absolute bastard. It seems to come naturally to me which is a little disturbing! Anyway, nervous now

He folds under the pressure. Backwards into a twisted scene of origami swan meets warty toad. The stacks of paper pile up high on the corner of his desk, the cats have taken a liking to the manifestos in the corner of the room and the silverfish fill  the banquet halls of whittled books with their kin from afar.

That nervous beating in the tips of his fingers won’t stop playing to the long-lost beats of the jazzy underground that he dreams of every night. The colors vivid from clocks of tangerine orange and wallpaper of lime green flower petals littering concord grape purple waves to the watermelon carpet and the lemon leather couches. Those women over in the corner near the bar stare, the smoke fluttering over their fake, ebony eyelashes, twisting into furtive smiles, rising into unseemly curtsies and hitting the dust-crusted fan whirling above with a whoosh and it’s gone. One wears silver sequins, apple-red lipstick, tight black boots reaching up her calves. The other wears a snow-white skirt, flamingo top, fire-orange lipstick, cat-eye contacts and calls herself Lucy. She flicks her cigarette across the room, it hits his pants, trails down his leg and  falls to the paper below, begins to burn. Everything is alight and the singed papers flutter upwards and out through the window, into the streets below and just keep churning outwards. More and more of fire-lit words into the frigid night air. Kids watch with wonderment, old folks sit on the stoops bundled in their warmest coats following the dragon tails of burning paper. And he’s free. Free of all that has piled up. Free of all that which he feels needs to be done. Free…to start again.

Only a few minutes have passed and the paper stacks remain just as high as before. The cockroaches have congregated on his desk, begin to play hockey with his pencils and erasers. He tries to flick one off, it spins and grabs his finger with a ravenous bite. The others run over, break their friend away from his digit, pantomime apologies and continue with their game. The coffee cup remains half full and he grabs it, sloshes the liquid across his desk, sweeping the creatures off of their feet and into the crevasses of the soiled wall below. He hears them gagging and cursing as they pick themselves up, promising him that they will be back. The silence returns. The deadline is in 20 minutes.

He thinks long and hard of his search for the sky blue whale, his flight through the clouds on feathered arms, the slaying of radioactive Gila monsters, his waltz with the shrew queen through the toadstool palace. The clock ticks. He imagines harder. 18 more minutes to enjoy the innocence of oblivion.