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Episode 5 Literally several of you have enquired as to when the next part of Baritonal Blarney will be out. Well I've been rather busy with rehearsals for Patience (just finished) and Yeomen of the Guard for Southwick Opera (in ten days time), not to mention painting the set for the former. And there is the small matter of earning my living as well of course. Well here it is: when I left you at the end of part 4 we had finished our rehearsals in Halifax for The Nomads Yeomen of the Guard which we were taking to The Waterford International Light Opera Festival in Ireland. These weekend gatherings had been great fun, but I wasn't going to miss the 500 mile round-trips: the moronic ditty "I've been to Halifax but I've never been to me" had started running through my head, and (whilst I am profoundly grateful to him for doing all the driving), worse was Stuart's idea of a Yorkshire accent which he used to adopt on the journey up the M1 when we reached Sheffield - for the following hour Lizzie and I had to put up with a monologue mostly involving cloth-caps and whippets. And now, as promised, it was Tuesday the 27th of September, and we were on our way to Waterford, southeast Ireland, via Dublin. Ian and Neil Smith were leading the main party from Liverpool Airport, whilst Lizzie Duffey, Stuart Box, Ian Henderson and myself were simultaneously flying from Gatwick. The classic pincer-movement. Vividly etched on my memory is an experience I had coming back from Bologna, Italy, in 1990, before which I used to adore flying, and since which I have been a little less keen. The flight was with Alitalia, and the passengers were mostly Italians including a party of perhaps thirty nuns, and whilst I have nothing against nuns (and I don't intend any offence to any nun-related Savoynetters), I have seen enough Disaster Movies to know that when flying on an airliner nuns are not necessarily good news, and in such quantity were surely a recipe for trouble. A heavy storm had descended on southern England, and our flight was the last one in before they closed down Heathrow for the day and diverted everything to Birmingham and Mancheaster. We approached the runway, it seemed to me, diagonally, with a side-wind that appeared likely to flip the plane over at any moment, and we landed, bounced, took off and landed several times, the wing-tips ostensibly missing scraping the runway by inches. There was terrified screaming from the Italian passengers, frantic clicking of Rosary beads and loud praying from the nuns, and even we stiff-upper-lipped Brits looked slightly concerned. The plane came to a halt safely at the end of the runway, and there was much sobbing, soon replaced by manic cheering for the pilot, and even the British contingent were heard to politely applaud. Below us on the tarmac, wind-buffeted members of the Heathrow Fire Brigade tried not to look too obviously disappointed. The reason I mention this is that as we waited to board the plane I was deeply engrossed in doing a nun-count. I could only spot two, which I guessed was lower than average to Dublin, so I was fairly sure that we were going to be OK. All our scenery was going seperately in a van on a ferry, not to mention the swords, halberds and sundry other props, including instruments of torture that might otherwise have raised a few eyebrows at Gatwick, but I was most impressed to notice that Ryanair had let an unhappy-looking seven-foot-tall gentleman in a long black robe with a hood, keep his scythe with him... |
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. Exhibit M: The magnificent Tower Hotel in Waterford where we all stayed. There are some who rather uncharitably believe that the big advantage in staying here is that you avoid having to look at it. |
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The drive from Dublin airport takes about 2 hours; that is if you avoid the late-afternoon rush-hour. We didn't, and were able to join about two-thirds of all the cars in Ireland as they attempted to leave Dublin simultaneously by the narrow and and wholly inadequate road network designed and built in Ireland's pre-prosperous days. With its' new-found wealth, as well as the shiny new cars, there seemed to be building-sites everywhere: fields, meadows and rolling hills are being covered with industrial estates and luxury flats, and since we travelled at about 10mph for the first two hours we had a unique opportunity to view this triumph of concrete over nature. So it was about four hours later that we reached Waterford, about 95 miles south of Dublin, and in particular the newly refurbished Tower Hotel (see Exhibit M) which is pleasantly luxurious if something of an eyesore. Opposite is Reginald's Tower (Exhibit N): built in the 12th century it claims to be the oldest intact building in Ireland - it has walls that are between 3 and 4 metres thick, which probably explains why it survived the ravages of Oliver Cromwell and his friends who, as I discovered as I did a spot of background reading for this, my first trip to Ireland, seem to have rather a lot to answer for when it comes to ruined Irish buildings. |
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Exhibit N: Reginald's Tower, Waterford's most famous building (apart from the Crystal Factory, perhaps). Although most of it is a museum, in true Irish tradition the bit round the back has been transformed into Reginald's Bar. |
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Wednesday the 28th September: the day of our performance, and an early breakfast. These are vast in Ireland and make Buxton Guesthouse breakfast fare look distinctly modest, and included the following (deeply fried) items: eggs, bacon, sausages, bread, tomatoes, mushrooms, potatoes, and both Black Pudding and White Pudding (sorry no photo, and best not to enquire exactly which ingredients go into these latter two delicacies). This was followed by an early morning stroll around Waterford in the light drizzle. There seemed to be rather a lot of this kind of weather, although I would be deceiving you if I said that it was like this throughout our trip: occasionally it stopped drizzling and started raining really hard. Exhibit O shows a view of the newly regenerated riverside area of Waterford - as you can see it is rather nice, and Waterford City did seem to be a rather affluent place. On the other hand a rougher bit of town which I wandered into by accident (sorry I didn't loiter long enough to take photos) put me in mind of parts of East Germany which I visited a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall: in a word, grim. |
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Exhibit O: Elegant and unobtrusive new development along John's River - I can't help thinking that plenty of British towns could learn a lesson or two from Waterford about how to do this kind of thing. |
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Exhibit P: a minute after taking the previous photo, I had a pang of homesickness when I came upon this heartwarming sight which reminded me of my beloved Littlehampton. |
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At 10a.m. we took our costumes to the theatre (Exhibit P) and helped with the get-in. The following link, if you give it a minute or so to load properly, yields a selection of photos of the inside of the beautiful and tiny Waterford Theatre Royal: it seats 680 people in moderate dicomfort (even less leg-room than Buxton Opera House) but the auditorium is a gem as I hope you can see. Backstage is a labyrinth, with wooden staircases, badly-patched linoleum on uneven floors, and dressing rooms without running water: it had much charm, but very few chairs. Jim Newby rehearsed the orchestra all morning, with members of the cast wandering in and out to hum or sing their solos and check tempi etc. Jim was very kind to the orchestra, carefully going over music that they had trouble with, but hearing how they struggled was a revelation to me, and I suspect that sometimes things were only kept going by the two instrumentalists we had brought with us (one was Sally Robinson, National Festival Festival Orchestra leader): I now realise that we have been rather spoiled by having such a good band at Buxton. |
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Exhibit Q: I know that this looks like three Georgian houses with a concrete and glass car-showroom stuck on the end, but this is in fact The Theatre Royal, Waterford, arguably the finest remaining 18th century theatre in the British Isles. Backstage, the dressing-rooms have thoughtfully been designed with the needs of aquaphobics in mind. |
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Mid-afternoon, halberds in hand, we were finally on stage. In Halifax Stuart and I , First and Second Yeomen you will remember, had been directed to "Guard the thing" at the beginning of Act 2. "Guard what Jim?" we asked; "The thing" he said vaguely waving his cigarette in the direction of the entrance downstage left. From then onwards, as a run of Act 2 was about to commence, Stuart would say to me "Come on, time for Thing-guarding" or "Just stop talking and go and guard The Thing." But now, as we stood on the actual stage - albeit not in costume - it all became clear: The Thing that we were guarding was a theatrical smoke-machine; in fact Sir Richard's Smoke Machine no less, used to give a misty effect to the opening of Act 2. It was presumably a rare item in the 16th century, which is why it needed two yeomen to keep an eye on it, and I'm guessing that he kept his Dry Ice in The Cold Harbour Tower. We ran parts of the ensembles, although Jim was keen not to have a tiring fully-fledged dress-rehearsal; we had no orchestra, and indeed no Fairfax either: Oliver was in the auditorium playing the accompaniment on a small electronic keyboard by torchlight. Clearly no expense had been spent. Exhibit R shows him in the foreground, whilst on stage John Savournin tells Ian Henderson that his life must be forfeited instead. You know how it goes. Well that's about it for rehearsals: the performance, like at Buxton a single all-or-nothing affair followed by an adjudication, was just four hours away; but you'll have to wait until next time to find out what happened. |
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Exhibit R: Not an updated version of Yeomen in modern dress, but rather the Act 1 Finale in our afternoon rehearsal. It is the only photo I can find of the cast on stage with the set. (I am front/right in the blue striped rugby shirt.) |
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