THE STAGE PAGE

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I have a job as an engineer. But acting, or trying to, has become a major passtime in my life. Many people know me as a quiet person. Indeed when I was younger I was stage-shy. That is no longer the case, and I've certainly surprised a few people. I like to think I've left an impression on some audiences.

On these pages there are reviews and discussions of the most significant productions I've been. I haven't earned a penny for doing any of these, but maybe oneday that will change. So, a chance to reminisce, if you were in any of these shows. Otherwise, it's just a little light reading. If you'd rather read an abreviated version, you might like to look at my stage CV.

Here are links to the reviews of the major productions I have performed in. On the way I have mentioned some other productions (concerts or workshops) that I have been in.

Ruddigore  (Febraury 1996, MUGSS)
Iolanthe (March 1997, MUGSS)
The Mikado (March 1998, MUGSS)
The Sorcerer (March 1999, MUGSS)
West Side Story (April 1999, Manchester university Musicals Society)
The Gondoliers (December 1999, ULOG)
Cold Comfort Farm (March 2000, ULOG)
Divorce Me, Darling! (December 2000, ULOG)
Princess Ida (March 2001, ULOG)
Street Scene (June 2001, Imperial Opera)
Sweeney Todd (June 2001, Imperial Opera)
Cheryomushki (June 2002, Imperial Opera)
The Tales of Hoffmann (March 2003, Hampstead Garden Opera)
Carmen (November 2003, Hampstead Garden Opera)
A Masked Ball (June 2004, Harrow Opera)
Madam Butterfly scene (February 2005, Harrow Opera)
Don Giovanni (June 2005, Harrow Opera)
Cendrillon (January 2007, Harrow Opera)

THE EARLY YEARS

        OK, I'm going to tell you about what I can remember from some of my early stage appearances. My earliest memory is being a mute shepherd in school nativity play (everyone's done that). I was once a tailor in 'The Emperor's new clothes'. This is the story of an emperor who uys a suit of clothes that can only be seen by wise men. The clothes actually don't exist, but no one wants to admit to being unwise! I was once in 'The Ugly Duckling' in which a cygnet is adopted into a family of ducks. I was a young boy who picked up the cygnet and took it home. The most significant thing I can remember about this is that the Headmaster of the school at the time (I won't state the name of the school) decided to virtually rework the scene during the dress rehearsal. What we had had before was wuite funny, what it was changed to was dreadful.

In 1989, when I was at Highate Junior School, I was in the musical comedy 'Nothing Venture', written by one of the teachers. It was quite pleasant. It was about a young lady, Amelia, who's uncle would not let her marry the man she wanted to marry, but wealthy airhead instead. Amelia tries to trick her uncle by disguising her boyfriend as a wealthy Indian. It fails, but things work out in the end. It had a kind of G&S feel to it. Of course there were male and female parts in this, but the cast was made up only from Highgate school pupils. All the pupils were boys, and so some of us had to dress as women. I was one of the unfortunate cross dressers. At the time, cross-dressing was not something I liked doing. Come the age of 20, that was not so much the case.

There was a bit of a pause after that, until November 1992. This was partly because I was worried about rehearsals intereferring with homework (remeber, I went to public school) and partly because there was a succession of bad drama teachers, which put me off. I was in a produciton called Wargames, feauring various sections of plays about war, with occassional poem thrown in. I agreed to participate in a section of the 'Dingo' (don't ask me who it's by, or what happens in it). I was an Irish soldier who is blown in an explosion, whilst carrying a cup of tea. It was jolly odd, and so were some of the other parts.

Soon after that, I appeared in 'The Mummer's Play of King George'. This was a play meant for the festive season about the We all wore black makeup, did a bit of singing, dancing, fire-eating (not me) and there was a duel between King George and the 'Turkish Knight'.

In November 1993 I was in a very odd play indeed, The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg. Strindberg was a Swedish author famous for writing surreal plays. This one begins with a student sees the ghost of a milkmaid outside a large house and then meets a strange old man called Mr. Hummel. It also turns out that the students father owed Mr. Hummel a large quantity of money, or at least Hummel says so. Hummel arranges it so that the student colonel, his beautiful daughter and his wife, Amelia. Amelia bears bandages, lives in a cupboard, thinks she's a parrot and calls herself Polly. It turns out that the colonel is not a colonel and his daughter is actually Hummel's daughter. Hummel is a sinister man and likes to meddle with people's 'destinies'. He's scared of a milkmaid (who appeared as a ghost) the colonel's manservant, Bengtsson. Bengtson exposes Hummel's and then, somehow, Hummel becomes a parrot and Amelia is normal again.
That's the briefest summary of the first 2 acts you're ever likely to read. As for the third act, I can't remember it! Except that the student falls for the girl, but then dies through undernourishment. Another thing I can remember is that it's set in 'The Hyacinth Room', but in one performance the crew failed to bring on the hyacinths, making it awkward for the actors as they were importnat to the story. I never really worked out the whole story until the week of the performances. There are many other characters involved, most of whom had no lines, but were important to the plat none the less. There were a lot of complicates sub-plots involved about ghosts and evil deeds and things.
I played the bogus colonel. There was a very awkward scene when Hummel is showing the colonel documents that prove that he owns everything in the house and that the colonel is no colonel. The colonel knew this already, but initially denies it before he can come to terms with the truth. This scene was awkward without an audience, and there is nothing humourous about it. But the audience, who frankly didn't understand what was going on, laughed at one or two moments while I as being stripped of my rank ad possessions. How inapproprite would it have been had I laughed with them. There was a line I dreaded saying because I knew they were going to laugh.
But it's good that a bit of humour found it's way into a deadly serious play.

RUDDIGORE

February1996

The society only produces one show per year, but plenty of effort is put into each one. Ruddigore was the first one that I did, and I was member of the chorus.

This operetta is set in Cornwall and about the Baronet of Ruddigore, who is afflicted with a curse, which is that he has to commit a crime each day, or else he suffers a horrible death, and then his successor inherits the curse. The current Earl is sir Despard Murgartoyd, but the rightful Earl is his elder brother Ruthven, who is believed dead but has actually assumed the identity of Robin Oakapple. The only people who know about this are his foster brother, Richard Dauntless. and his valet, Old Adam Goodheart. Robin is in love with Rose Maybud, but is too shy to say so. Richard is a sailor and arrives home after 10 'long' years at sea. Richard is not at all shy, and tells Robin that he'll talk to Rose and 'spin a yarn' that will help get them togther. However, Rose is a beautiful woman, and Richard falls for her! When Robin, he is upset, but accepts the situation. However, Rose does the realise that he maed a hasty decision. So then Rose and Robin are engaged. But as a ploy to win Rose back, Richard tells Despard to reveal Robin's true identity. This he does just as the couple are about to marry. Thus the wedding is off, much to the annoyance of Rose's bridesmaids who, apparently, cannot marry until she does. They want to marry a bunch of soldiers who've recently come to Cornwal, with the soul intent of finding women. Robin thus becomes Ruthven again and inherits the curse from Despard. For unexplained reasons though, Despard gives himself a new curse in marrying Mad Margaret.

Ruthven is a diffident character and isn't very good at committing crimes. After his first week his ancestors come out of their portraits and question him. The crimes he has committed in his first week urn out to be somewhat 'powderpuff', or not crimes at all such as forging his own will. Sir Roderick, his dead uncle tells Ruthven that he must carry off a lady at once or else he shall have to die. Ruthven asks Adam to do it for him. Adam duly carries off dame Hannah, not a good choice as Hannah is the former fiancée Roderick. This fails to impress Roderick (affectately known as Roddy Doddy). But then Ruthven suddenly realises that suicide is a crime. This means that any baronet who refuses to commit a crime and dies for it, is committing suicide, which is committing a crime. So, all of a sudden, the curse is broken all of the dead baronets come back to life. Rose starts loving Ruthven again, and everyone's happy, except Richard, and possibly Despard.

The principals in this production were all very good, in particular, Despard gave a superbly morose performance despite not having a particularly loud voice. One or two of did not learn their lines very well. This resulted in there being some dialogue, when Sir Ruthven is telling his ghostly ancestors about his first week of crime, which was slightly different each night. On one night after discussing Wednesday's crime said:

Ruthven: (long pause) What day is it next?

Roderick: Well.........we could always go for..... Wednesday?

Ruthven: On Wednesday.......No it's Thursday next, what are you talking about?

Well it was quite funny, if unintentional.

There were several topical jokes inserted into the script, for example, one of sir Ruthven's 'crimes' was the opening of the Newbury bypass. Also, one of the bridesmaids was named Gladys instead of Ruth. Near the start she steals a can of Boddingtons bitter and the line 'That Gladys, she never buys her own' followed, which was taken from a TV commercial. For reasons I have yet to find out, Adam Goodheart was renamed Gideon Crawle.

IOLANTHE

March 1997

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Things go badly wrong when Phyllis spies on Strephon talking to Iolanthe, who looks much younger than she really is. The peers then laugh at the idea of a mother being younger than own son. As a result, Phyllis leaves Strephon for the two Earls, though she no reason to choose either one of them as wealth is the only 'bate' they use. Strephon calls upon the fairies to help him. The Lord Chancellor is dismayed by the intrusion and gets angry with Fairy Queen. However, he had no idea that she was a fairy (from Anderson's library) until she says so. In retaliation, the fairy queen fixes it so that Strephon bcomes leader of both the Tory and Liberal parties.

Strephon causes a great deal of chaos as a leader of both parties, carrying every bill he may wish, including one which means that the peers will, for now on, have to pass an examination to earn their title. The two Earls are incensed by this, as they are not at all intelligent. Lord Mount sings a song about the peerage, and how useless they are. The fairies are all charmed by this song and start to like the peers.

The highlight of the second act is when the Lord Chancellor makes his entrance. He still can't decide whether he can consent to himself marrying Phyllis (what she wants is obviously of no consequence). He is troubled by this that he cannot sleep and he sings the 'Nightmare Song'. It is a fantastic song, and my song, the football nightmare song, is sung to that tune. The two Earls then appear and tell him that neither of them are going to marry Phyllis and thet he should go ahead and consent (remember 'Faint heart never won fair lady').

Despite enjoying the chaos he's created, Strephon misses Phyllis. On meeting her though he manges to convince her that he is a fairy they get back together. To gain consent for their marriage, Iolanthe has to reveal herself to the Lord Chancellor. But Iolanthe has violated the fairy laws once and to do so again will result in execution. This she does, to one of the saddest tunes in the Sullivan repertoire, knowing that she is to die.

The Fairy Queen enters with a spear and threatens Iolanthe. But then, the other fairies all admit that they have all fallen in love with the peers. As the fairy is outraged but cannot surely slay the whole company. The Lord Chancellor advises that the law be changed such that all fairies must marry mortals. Fortunately there is one other male mortal in the show, Private Willis of the Grenadier Guards. He's the one that the Fairy Queen marries. Then, suddenly, wings appear on the backs of all of the men. They become fairies and they all go away to Fairyland. The two Earls have problems with this, as they know they are no longer intelligent enough to retain their rank.

This, by my opinion, is the best G&S operetta musically. I particularly like the overture and the extended Act 1 finale. I played the Earl of Mountararat in this production, my first major solo vocal role. Roughly 2500 tickets were available for this production, but only half were sold. It is somewhat disappointing that the MUGSS show with the lowest attendance figures is the one in which I had the largest part. It was also the only one for which no video recording was released, but I don't like watching myself on video. If there's one thing I don't like about Iolanthe, it's that the Earls come on two thirds of the way through act 1, but their stupidity is not evident until the middle of Act 2 when they have an argument as to which of them should marry Phyllis.

Most of the principals were good, or very good. The fairy queen didn't have quite the dominance that the part requires, but this was inevitable as it is ideally a part for a mature alto voice which few strudents have it. The worst thing about this production was the incompetence of the orchestra. On the plus side, I liked the fairy costumes, and so did the men in the lighting box. Not everyone agrees with me, but I liked the 3 sets, particularly that of the Arcadian scene at the start. There were one or two bits of nice choreography in the March of the Peers and in the 'Faint Heart never won fair lady' song, which included a 'Macarena' sequence. I thought the fairies entering through the curtains one by one in the latter part of the overture and the subsequent mime sequence with the fairy queen was nice touch. Some the peers made excellent use of props such as walking sticks, ear trumpets and porno mags. Micheal Green would have been proud of their course acting.

I came close to corpsing in 'The Ghost Sonata', as mentioned earlier, but I came much closer in final performance of this one. There is a song that the lead fairies, Celia and Leila sing, in which they declare that they are moved by the peers. In the second verse, Leila flirted with me, and enthusiastically so in this last performance. I managed to contain my laughter, but did, apparently, go quite red in the face.

In reflection of this production, I wrote this limerick about myself

There was once a young man called Will
Who at all kinds of sport had no skill
He was totally crap
At card games, like 'Snap!
But as Mountararat he was brill.

OK, thinking back, there were things I could have done better. Still, over 1000 people were exposed to my voice, which was just as loud then as it is now. Bring on the next show.

THE MIKADO

March 1998

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        Do I need to outline the plot to this one? This, and the Pirates of Penzance, and the two most famous of G&S's operattas. I consider this, in an overall sense, to be the best of G&S's works. It has a succession of very good songs. If you don't know the story, have a look at the savoynet site at http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/savoynet/ The Mikado has a history of being done in contemporary settings. In this production the setting was at a car factory. When director Nigel Machin proposed his idea, most people thought it was a daft idea, when explained properly we were a little more convinced. He built a little model of his idea for a set which included a numerous moving parts, and thought to myself 'is this possible?' and 'where does the cast fit in?'. As things came to pass, less than half of the set ideas were used, and yet the production still won awards for the most elaborate set design, or something like that, at the Manchester amateur musical awards. In addition, Mr. Machin won an award for best direstoe and Mr. Pete England won the award for best musical director. Not undeserved awards. The set actually consisted of scaffolding, which wasn't in the model. The Mikado made his entrance in a helicopter along with abseiling security guards. Koko made his entrance as a gameshow host in the tightest of bodysuits along with kick line of long-legged women and a male chorus wearing glitter hats. There was a glitter hat routine during the 'Little List' song and, as you might expect, it always went wrong. But it didn't it spoil it for the audience by any means. The chorus wore boiler suits and caps, with pigtails attached, for most of the play. The three little maids all wore blond wigs (fort contrast?) and Pooh Bah had an extension to his stomach (a tremendous swell. in Pooh Bah's first song Pish Tush took a trip to the lavoratory. Nanki Poo was made to look very sexy in his opening with his sunglasses and electric guitar. Perhaps the strangest idea brought into the script occurred at the end of act 1, where all the factory workers (chorus) pass out, presumably due some spell cast by Katisha.

        This show had everything, well not quite. There were 65 performers in this play (not including the crew members who made brief appearances) and many of them were good actors. Unfortunately most of these good actors were in the chorus. This is partly because many of them didn't audition for principal parts, and partly because the auditions were carried out in something of hurry, like 1 minute per person. I just don't think that's enough time to find out who's really suitable for each role. It is perhaps needless to say that I was in the chorus, not that I've much luck in other shows I've auditioned for. Some of the principals couldn't even sing very well. Peep Bo, in particular, was difficult to hear. Nanki Poo was the least loveable romantic lead ever, you would have wanted him to be executed. The actor playing the title role was making his stage debut with this production. He did the dialogue reasonably well with his sinister voice. In the song "My object so Sublime", the best song in the show, he stood at the front of the stage with arms straight and looked terrified, at least that was the case on the night it was recorded. Having said that, the security guards attracted plenty of attention in pointing their guns at the hoards of admiring peasants. Koko, however, was very good, and if there was an award for having to sing in a tight bodysuit, I'm sure he'd have won it! The second and third verses of the little list song were altered, as is frequently done, to include modern day people who ought to be executed (such as people who run Virgin trains, the members of the band 'Blur' and Peter Mandelson). The orchestral problems that occurred with Iolanthe were rectified, though not, perhaps, in the cheapest possible way. Indeed, to raise an additional £1000 for hiring more accomplished musicians we organised a couple of events the blind date/games evening and the slave auction*. The latter did a much better job and money was raised. It required a bit of effort, but we got some fun out of it. The most important thing is that the audience attendance was good (~80%), which was good because I was treasurer.

*if any members of Imperial Opera read this, this is the same as the dream auction.

THE SORCERER

March 1999

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The Sorcerer is the first of G&S's 'full length' operettas after the two 'forty-minuters' Trial by Jury and Thespis. In this magical story, the young Alexis Pointdextre is to marry Aline Sangazure. Alexis has a plan to defy nature and convention, which is to give a quantity of Sorcerer John Wellington Wells' love philtre to the people of the village such that they will all fall in love with someone and get married. It would be nice if poor people would marry rich people, and old marry young, such that they could help each other. The villagers are given a dose at Dr. Daly's (the vicar) tea party at the end of Act 1. They are put to sleep for 12 hours. On awaking, each person falls in love with the first person he or she sees of the opposite sexy who has also taken the philtre. This results, amongst other things, in Constance, who was in love with the vicar, falling in love with The Notary. The plan seems to be working well, but Alexis is hoping that his father, Marmaduke, will fall in love with Aline' mother, Lady Sangazure. Instead, he falls in love with Mrs. Partlett, a pew-opener and Constance's mother. Lady Sangazure then falls in love with Mr. Wells Mr. Wells declines, flasely claiming that he has a partner. That shouldn't have happened since Mr. Wells didn't take the philtre. It made even less sense in our production because Mr.John Wellington Wells was in fact Miss Jane Wellington Wells. Things then go very wrong when Alexis orders Aline to take the philtre such they can become inseparable. Aline refuses at first, believing that Alexis doesn't trust. Later she does. but then the first man she sees is Dr.Daly. The only way to break the spell is for either Alexis or Mr. Wells to be killed. Mr. Wells gets the chop by popular appeal, and then everyone (remarkably) falls in love with the right person and everyone lives happily ever after. Why did they all have to wait for spell to be cast upon them and then relieved before getting together with the right person?

Constance: You very, very deaf old man I love, I love you madly. You very deaf old man I love you madly.

Notary I am a very deaf old man, who hears you very badly.

Chorus: You very deaf old man she loves you madly.

The Notary's line ends on a low E-flat, but I only sang E because I'm not really a bass. I sat in a wheelchair and had an ear trumpet. I tried to make myself look old by putting on a warped expression. People were generally impressed with my ability to sing loudly with this expression. On the last night I wore false eyebrows. One refused to stay on. 'Will they notice if I wuickly try and push it down?' Yes they did, and they laughed. At the end of the show, I was privileged to hook up with the big-breasted village prostitute, an alteration to the script!.

Many of the G&S veterans consider The Sorcerer to be one of the best of the operettas. I am not one of these people. For me the only good song are the one I've just described and Well's patter song in which he talks about the many things he is able to do. There are several inconsistencies in the plot and the cutting of the scene where Mr. Wells asks the spirit Arimanes how to break the spell. I think that Alexis should have been killed off, because it was his idea. Having said that, I think this was the best directed of the 4 MUGSS shows that I did. It included some flowing dance routines, some elegant costumes and the rain. The rain was made by pumping water through a pipe with little holes and landing in trough which the crew many hours building. One good thing about this G&S play is that the chorus members all have different characters and costumes, so they don't all look the same.

I think it's fair to say that in this show I made the bigger impression on the audience in this show relative to the amount of effort required. However the star ham was Neville, the sheep. This was a robotic sheep that members of the crew designed which wagged his head and opened it's mouth when the chorus sang. Unfortunately it kept getting decapitated and had to be repaired a fwe times between performances. I don't think it would do very well on Robot Wars.

 This was the last show I did with MUGSS. I wrote this tribute song, One year of mugss .

WEST SIDE STORY

April 1999

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The auditions for this were near the start of October 1998; the production, after a rescheduling, was at the April 1999. That makes this production the most drawn of all the plays I've been. Despite that there was a rehearsal every night during the week before the production. The biggest problem with this production was that the two directors were also the committee, and they cast themselves as Tony and Anita, which meant they gave themselves too much to do. The show was origianlly to be put on at Manchester's Dance House theatre. Alas it fell through but UMIST's Renold Theatre came to the rescue, and so all of the plays I did at Manchester were held there. One of the cast, on finding out that I was taking part in two productions in my final asked me "You must have to study every spare second?", and he had a point. The fact is, I have since met someone who did 10 productions in his final year. If he can do 10, I can do 2.

Still, with so much violence, you'd expect someone to get hurt. I had a bit a scare during one performance. In the rumble at the end of Act 1 I had a skirmish with A-rab which ended with him strangling me. He, perhaps got a little excited and started strangling me properly ('he will let go he, won't he?' I kept telling myself). He did, eventually, but as if to add insult to injury, he gave my ribs a sharp kick, while I was lying facedown on the floor getting my breath back. We'd rehearsed the strangle, but not the kick. But he was Geordie, so what would you expect?

This is one of the few plays I've been in with unhappy endings. After Tony had been shot by Chino at the end there was an almost eerie silence, unlike any other that I have heard in that theatre. Yes, there was an audience, in case you're wondering.

THE GONDOLIERS

December 1999

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And the first thing I did was The Gondoliers, but you know who. I have to I was not especially keen to do yet another G&S production so soon but Having said that Guiseppe would be good part for me to play.

The society concerned was The University of London Opera Group (or ULOG for short). I had hoped that there would be a large number of people in it and that there'd be plenty of social activity as there were no auditions for the chorus and because it attracted people from all London colleges.
Nope. The smallest MUGSS cast I've been in was still a good deal bigger than the largest ULOG cast that I have thus far been with. Also, in MUGSS there was always a dedicated crew of at least 10 people, in ULOG, you're lucky to have a crew at all (no disrespect intended).

Anyway, The Gondoliers. There is awkward situation in Venice, 24 contadine (peasant girls) are in love with 2 gondoliers, named Marco and Guiseppe Palmieri, and the 2 gondoliers love all of them. They decide which one's they are to marry be means of blind man's buff. Marco picks up Gianetta and Guiseppe picks up Tessa.

In the mythical land of Barataria, it is believed that the two gondoliers are not brothers at all and that one of them is the son of the late king of Barataria and only the prince's former foster mother, Inez, who stole the child knows who it is. The one concerned was engaged to Casilda, the daughter of the Duke of Plaza-Toro at birth. The Duke, Duchess, Casilda and Luiz, the drummer boy. Don Alhambra Del Bolero goes to visit the brothers to tell of about the situation, but just he about to tell them that one of them is to be a king, Guiseppe states that they are republicans, despising wealth and royalty. But their principles disappear as soon as Don Alhambra tells them. Guiseppe says that he doesn't hate kings, just bad kings! So instead of abdicating they decide that they will have system of making all people of equal rank. So no matter whether they clean boots, hunt and shoot, or bank at Coutts they are of equal rank!

As stated previously, I was hoping to play Guiseppe, but I didn't. I actually had two roles, Antonio and Annibale (friends of two main gondoliers). This 'honour' was a result of the rather small number of male auditionées (is that a real word?). At least, in playing Annibale, I actually had some dialogue, something I'd had none of in the previous three shows, albeit only 3 lines. I can't complain about the directors' choice of Guiseppe, indeed many of singers were vocal students at London's Trinity College of Music, or the Royal College of Music, and thus (obviously) were very good.

I like most of the music in The Gondoliers. I particularly like the Italian bit when the brothers make their first entrance and their duet that follows ("We're called gondolieri but that's a vagary , it's quite honorary the deed that we ply"). I also like The Duchess' 'progenitor' song. The star ham of this show was Luciano, the piss-head gondolier (he also played Don Alhambra, but his piss-head performance was more memorable). The direction and 'special effects' could have been a bit more involved, but the biggest let down of this show was the audience attendance, or lack of it. The Oratory school theatre is pleasant theatre to perform in, a bit smaller than UMIST's Renold theatre (about 300 people compared top the Renold's 450), but having lots of seats in the audience doesn't seem like a good thing if most of them aren't taken. If you take number of people who came to see Iolanthe and divide it by 10 you get something close to the number who came to see this. It probably cost about a tenth as much to put on, but even so. It was a shame, because the talents of the cast deserved a bigger audience.

In all honesty, I'm not certain that it was worthwhile doing this play from the point of view of how much work I had to do that term. Indeed I had exam right in the middle of that week thoughnI didn;y know that at the time of the auditions. But had I dropped out, there would have been one man fewer in the cast (disaster!).