Breaking Into The Evenings

My first job way back in 1978  was a  British Council tour Shakespeare play on behalf of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. We trotted back and forward across Europe playing for two or three nights in large theatres and attending a number of receptions in British embassies and various other locations. It was an evening reception in the cultural attache's house in Luxembourg on one of our rare evenings off which stays in my mind. By now we had grown used to making chitchat with the various diplomats and their wives we would encounter. We all had our stock reply to that searching question  "How do you learn your lines?".

So it was rather refreshing to be taxed in a different way on this particular evening by a  diplomatic wife whose first query about our lives in the theatre was "Don't you find it breaks into your evenings terribly?".  I don't think it was something that any of us had really considered. Having just come out of drama school where I had trained entirely for the theatre, it seemed a rather unreasonable question. Of course it broke into my evenings. That's when theatre took place. In fact I would have had a much more positive response to the question "Don't you find it breaks into your afternoons occasionally?". To this day I loathe the thought of a matinee, only slightly less as an audience member than I do as a performer.

 The words of the Luxembourg cultural attache's wife have haunted me over recent weeks as I  returned to the theatre for the first time in nearly 10 years. It really has broken into my evenings. The Sky box has been on overtime, and Sundays have been a little bit like those I experienced in my A-level years when there was all sorts of homework to be done - only for the last three weeks it's been catching up on some excellent programs that I've missed during the  previous seven days.

Let's be clear. I enormously enjoyed taking part in Matthew Parker's excellent production of "Brimstone and Treacle" by Dennis Potter which has recently played at the fabulous Hope Theatre on Upper Street in Islington. The whole enterprise was rather marvellous. Parker is a fantastic director, but he's also a brilliant organiser. Add to this three other cast members who were an absolute joy to work with, a production team who compromised on nothing even though we were only playing a 50 seat venue, and a whole clutch of excellent five-star reviews and an incredibly positive audience reaction. I was absolutely overjoyed that so many friends and colleagues turned out to see me take to the boards. Many of whom had not had the opportunity to see me do this before, and while not exactly helping my nerves, it was an absolute delight to walk down the steps from the theatre each night and find friendly faces in the bar waiting to say hello.
As Tom Bates in "Brimstone and Treacle"

 But yes, it did break into my evenings terribly. Having forgotten that it can actually be quite demanding just to do a show each night, I had not emptied my diary in the daytime. Recording more episodes of an audio drama for the excellent Big Finish, meetings, and a variety of other projects filled out my daily diary, at the end of which I would head up to Islington to spend 90 minutes on stage..

 So it's taken a little bit of time to recover, and part of that recovery has been the joy of having my evenings given back to me. I spent two of them this week sat in theatres watching other actors give their evenings up for my entertainment . I didn't feel guilty. I just felt relaxed.

 During our final weekend of performance, we were lucky enough to spend a Sunday seeing both parts of Harry Potter. It was  fabulous experience. A great story and a really valid and exciting piece of theatre. As the actors took their bows at 9 PM on a Sunday evening, I thought how their weekends have been for the past year. No family time, and certainly no tv and sofa time  with the rest of the family and their loved ones.

 I was immensely grateful that they had given their talents to a day which gave me the most fantastic experience in the theatre. But I was well aware of the sacrifice they made.

So for now my evenings are my own. I'm back to having the luxury of planning what to cook for our evening meal, rather than leaving my partner with a selection of microwave boxes purchased at the weekend. The Sky box is not quite so busy and my time at the Hope is consigned to the vast marked Happy Memories.


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