Great balls of fire!

The midweek post comes a little early this time around, chums. Allow me to explain.

You see, once again, Yr. Humble Chronicler is doing a show. But no ordinary show. This time, Youth Action Theatre is spreading its wings somewhat and going for an all out, high-camp, rock ‘n’ roll musical, Return to the Forbidden Planet! Wooo!

If you don’t know the show, it’s… well, how can I describe it? It’s a spoof of sci-fi B-movies which is based loosely on The Tempest, set to a track of classic tunes from the 1950s and ’60s. It owes more than a little to Forbidden Planet, as you might imagine from the title, but also borrows liberally from just about every terrible science fiction film of that era. As well as pretty much everything Shakespeare ever wrote. It’s complicated.

The basic story is that the spaceship Albatross, under the command of the heroic Captain Tempest, makes the mistake of going on a routine survey expedition. As you know if you’ve watched any episode of Star Trek, in the future the word “routine” means exactly the opposite of what it does now, and the ship gets diverted to the mysterious planet of D’Illyria. There, they are greeted by the mad Doctor Prospero, his beautiful daughter Miranda and their camp robot Ariel. And then things start to go wrong. What is the terrible secret of D’Illyria? Who is the enigmatic new science officer? Where did Prospero get that outfit? All this and more will be revealed…

(By the way, I’m playing Doctor Prospero. Yeah, I do have to sing. Yeah, I am slightly bricking it.)

If science fiction campiness is not to your taste, I should mention once again our extremely rocking soundtrack. Good Vibrations, Shakin’ All Over, All Shook Up and Shake, Rattle and Roll are in there, along with a variety of songs that aren’t about vibrating at all, like Teenager in Love, Mr Spaceman, Great Balls of Fire, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, Wipeout, The Monster Mash, The Young Ones… and that’s just the ones you’ve heard of. All live, performed by an awesomely talented cast, and also me.

Our production is going pretty all-out. We’ve got the Mill doing our special effects – that’s the Mill, as in, the people who do Doctor Who and Torchwood. I know, right? We’re going to have a live band on stage. We’re transforming the Hampton Hill Playhouse into a spaceship (not literally). It’s all going to need a lot of work, so Yr. Humble Chronicler intends to be mucking in tomorrow evening.

Anyway, if you’re looking for something fun to do next week, something that’ll put a spring in your step, the show runs 9th-12th November inclusive at the Hampton Hill Playhouse in West London. To book tickets, kindly click on this link. Blast off!

Mine eyes dazzle

Now, I’m afraid I’m going to be a bit rubbish over the next two weeks, chums. The reason for this is that, as I have previously said, I’m going to be in Youth Action Theatre’s production of The Duchess of Malfi, this week in London and next week at the Edinburgh Fringe. This will, I fear, make updates on this blog sporadic at best.

Of course, if you’d like to see this play yourself, you’d be most welcome to come along. This week – from Tuesday 9th to Thursday 11th August – we will be performing at the Hampton Hill Playhouse as part of a double-bill with a rather exciting devised piece called Lost and Found. It’s a world premiere sort of thing, so I must confess to not knowing a huge amount about it – however, I can vouch for the talent of the author, cast and director. It’s made extra-exciting by the fact that Yr. Humble Chronicler is supplying some of the props.

The Duchess of Malfi follows, and in accordance with the limitations of the Edinburgh Fringe, is pared down to an hour long. What this means is that you can tell everyone you’ve seen Webster’s masterpiece, but you haven’t had to sit through the full-length version which is like six weeks long or something.

If this all sounds like your kind of thing, and frankly why wouldn’t it, more info can be found here. Or if I’ve excited you sufficiently with this blog entry alone, you can book tickets here.

Of course, it might be that you’re in Edinburgh the following week, in which case why not come to see us up there? We’ll be at The Space (venue 36) from August 15th-20th, and you can book tickets here or here.

So there we are. I hope you’re as excited as I am, and I hope to see you there. Until next time, chums.

Where’s Tom?

I’m going to have to apologise in advance for this week. I try to be pretty good about updating this thing – two entries a week, Wednesday and Sunday or before. But this week I’m afraid I’m going to have to fall behind a little.

You see, this is the week of the play, and what that means is that I’m not really around. I’ve spent most of the last couple of weeks in Hampton Hill Playhouse rehearsing or, as seen right, helping to assemble the set. Things are looking good, I have confidence that this show is going to kick some theatrical arse. You should really come and see it – info is in the link above.

Anyway, wish me luck, chums. I hope my legs break, or whatever.

Coming Attractions

What are your plans for this April? I know there’s Mother’s Day and Easter and I believe that Royal Wedding business is happening then, but what about the period from the 13th-16th inclusive?

I know! Why don’t you go to the theatre?

I can understand some of your objections – it’s expensive, it’s hard to get tickets for the big shows, Andrew Lloyd-Webber is pretty rich already, and so on, and so forth. So why not go a bit further out, to Hampton Hill in West London? At the Hampton Hill Playhouse, I hear there’s a superb production of Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible coming up. And what’s even better is that I’m in it. I’m playing Danforth, the dude presiding over the mess, no less. So don’t worry, it’s not like one of those shows you go to because someone you know is in it, and then it turns out they’re only in like one scene at the end or something.

The Crucible is one of the all-time greats of American drama, a dramatisation of the Salem witch trials originally published as a protest against McCarthyism, so much so that Miller (shown left) was himself investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee over it. Though McCarthyism is but an embarrassing memory, the play still retains its relevance – wherever personal morality is put to the test by greater oppression, or where ostensibly laudable motivations are used to mask selfish greed, where mass hysteria overcomes reason and emotion is given precedence over common sense, there you’ll see the parallels. For this reason, it’s Miller’s most performed play. Plus a guy gets crushed between some rocks, which is wicked-awesome.

So, an amazing piece of drama with me in it. How much would you expect to pay for that in the West End? Thirty? Fifty? A hundred pounds a ticket? Well, turns out you can get them at a low, low price of EIGHT POUNDS!

Yeah, I know, now you’ve had some time to recover, you’re probably wondering where you can take advantage of this incredible offer? Well, you can book online right here.

I’ll see you there! Yaaaay!

Salem Particulars

Yr. Humble Chronicler finds himself, for the first time in years, back on stage. Regular readers may recall my alluding to my time spent treading the boards in both an amateur and professional capacity in the past. Well, I’m doing it again.

The play in question is a youth theatre production of Arthur Miller’s classic, The Crucible. This is a perennial favourite, partly because of its quality and permanent relevance, but also because it has a lot of female roles. One of the standard problems with amateur theatre is that most plays with a substantial cast are heavily male-orientated while most amateur drama groups have more women than dudes.

The play, if you’re not familiar with it, is a dramatisation of the Salem witch trials. This was an unusual case of mass hysteria that took place in 1692-93 in and around the town of Salem, Massachusetts. A great number of liberties are taken with historical accuracy for dramatic purposes, but what happened was basically this: in Salem, a number of people apparently became afflicted by seizures and tantrums, starting with the young girls Abigail Williams and Betty Parris. Witchcraft was cited as a cause. Accusations were initially levelled at more vulnerable members of the town – the Barbadian slave Tituba and the homeless Sarah Good, for instance. These allegations then spread to more “upstanding” members of the community, regular churchgoers and landowners, snowballing out of control. Over a hundred and fifty were accused of witchcraft, including those who suggested that maybe everyone was getting a little hysterical. Nineteen people were executed in all, plus one elderly man – Giles Corey – was tortured to death in an attempt to get a plea from him.

Even by the superstitious standards of the day, this was an unusual event. Indeed, the American colonies were notably more level-headed about witchcraft than communities in Europe, and in Virginia, false accusations came with a fine equivalent to a year’s income for a prosperous farmer.

A possible reason for the sorry mess might have been the isolation of the area. Massachusetts at this time was a loosely-linked group of colonies, with much authority deriving from the Church. When the Church was Puritan, this spelt trouble. Primary-school history will tell you that the Puritans went to America to be free to worship in their own way. In practice, when a sect claims it wants freedom of worship, what it often means is “we want to do all sorts of horrible and dubiously-legal things without being questioned” (coughChurchofScientologycough). And so the Massachusetts colonies, at least the ones that concern us here, were effectively theocracies to rival the Taliban. Non-attendance at church was seen as deeply suspicious, folk song was banned (have you ever heard a Puritan hymn? They sound like a group of cats dying of boredom) and education in anything other than religious matters was considered highly unnecessary and probably Papist.

Coupled with this was the fact that Massachusetts was effectively frontier territory. Not particularly economically prosperous, with no infrastructure and no effective authority, and with famine, disease and native attacks an ever-present threat (due in no small part to the standard colonial method of diplomacy), it was perhaps no surprise that hysteria could take hold.

Then you had the question of personal feuds, of which there were plenty in the town. The minister, Reverend Parris, was utterly crap at resolving these and was in himself not a popular man. So when the accusations started flying, some historians (and Arthur Miller in the play) have suggested that many in the towns saw it as a means to settle old scores.

The character I’m playing is Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, who, in the play, oversees the trials. Now, when I play a real historical figure, I like to research the character to get a feel for him. My information on Louis Wain and Arthur Phillip came from my research into plays in which I have performed. Danforth was a powerful and influential man in reality, owning large amounts of land – his lands are now the site of the appropriately-named town of Framingham, Massachusetts. The character in the play has obviously been tweaked – again for dramatic purposes – and is essentially a composite character with elements of the hangin’ judge. I think he’ll be a lot of fun to play, he’s portrayed as a pious hypocrite, something of a bully and rather insecure. Good times.

I suspect this will not be the last you hear about this play within these pages. The performance will be in early April at the Hampton Hill Playhouse. Come and see if you’re in the area, I’ll give you more info when I have it.