oxford theatre guild

2006-04-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

PS
The week’s run played to an average audience of 90% - which means that about 3250 people saw the show.
We got a couple of rave reviews that used such words as ‘stunning’, ‘outstanding’ and ‘excellent’. (Plus one bad review: a curmudgeonly – and somewhat bizarre - whinge that began by bemoaning the fact that Wilde’s plays weren’t written by American sitcom scriptwriters...)
The actors were all agreed that they’d had a hugely enjoyable time both during the rehearsal period and the run itself.
And, personally, it was one of the most satisfying productions I’ve ever directed.
Whichever way you look at it, Lady Windermere’s Fan has to count as a success.for the Guild.
However, in the way of theatre everywhere, we now have an instant shift of focus. With Colin McNee’s production of The Tempest only three months away, Wilde gives way to Shakespeare, and the Playhouse gives way to the great outdoors.
Theatre. Don’t you just love it?

2006-04-13T08:22:00.000-07:00

Week 13
It’s WYSIWYG time: What You See Is What You Get. We’ve had our last off-site rehearsal, a complete run-through. We’ve had the Tech – essential and painstaking for the technical crew, initially fascinating for the actors as they sit on real period furniture instead of church hall chairs, then intensely boring as they stand around for hours being Objects To Be Lit. And we’ve had the Dress, a full-on performance in an empty theatre. So, no matter how brilliant my last-minute ideas may be, it’s too late to include them. (Anyway, if they’re that brilliant, why didn’t I think of them earlier...?)
Everything is in place now, apart from one ingredient. The actors have climbed inside the skins of the characters Oscar created, and have taken on their personas. They’ve used all their technique and experience to make sure the story is told clearly and convincingly. Wardrobe has transported their appearance back to a different era, and our Designer and his team have completed the transformation with an Art Nouveau set. The Lighting Designer – usually so underrated (theatre cliché: if you notice the lighting, the designer’s got it wrong) - has woven the appropriate atmosphere into each scene.
The illusion is complete. But it’s like Sleeping Beauty: it still needs that magic kiss to bring it alive. The magic kiss of an Opening Night audience – and the adrenalin that comes with it.
I love opening nights – especially when, like tonight, we’ll be playing to a full house. All the hard work, all the experimentation, all the fine-tuning finally crystallised into a gift-wrapped offering. And the flutter of anticipation: will they like it? Will they hate it? Will they (worst of all) say ‘Yeah, that was all right, I suppose...’
Tonight, the verdict of the audience. Tomorrow, the verdict of the press. But that’s a different matter altogether...

2006-04-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

Week 12
As we get towards the end of the rehearsal period, we get to ‘the runs’. No, that’s not the panic-stricken actors’ response to an impending opening night, but to a period when we start putting everything together, rather like a jigsaw puzzle.
For the last three months we’ve been working at fleshing out the characters, building convincing relationships between them, tracing their emotional journeys from beginning to end of the play, shaping the story, making sure the climaxes come at the right time.. Now it’s time to draw all those threads together, to see the picture as a whole.
Many actors – and even more directors – seem to forget what a play is actually there for. It’s not there to make the actor look good, or to feed the director’s ego: it’s there to entertain the audience. And, in order to do that, you have to draw them into your world, to make them believe what they’re seeing on the stage.
Think of it. There you are, sitting surrounded by other people, looking at a stage. You can see some of the stage lighting. You know that the pillars flanking the ballroom are actually made of polystyrene. You recognise the aristocratic Lord at the centre of the action: you were down the pub with him last weekend..
But, somehow, we’ve got to make you see a 19th Century ballroom, with a real-life drama being acted out in it. A marriage about to fail, a young woman about to destroy her life, a despised woman acting nobly, young bloods being oh so witty. Most of all, we’ve got to make you care what happens.
When kids in a pantomime audience shout out ‘Behind you!’, it’s because they care. They genuinely want to warn the hero/heroine that they’re in danger. It’s not so easy once those kids have grown up.
But that’s what we’ve got to achieve. We’ve got to spin a web and lure the audience into it. We’ve got to create an illusion. And the slightest error will destroy that illusion.
So, for the last two weeks, rehearsals are conducted under performance conditions. No prompts, no stoppages – and no excuses.
Yes, it’ll be all right on the night. Because we’ve made sure it’s already all right two weeks before we open.

.

2006-04-01T12:46:00.000-08:00

Week 11
When casting any play, the director has to balance several factors. Talent, of course, has to be a given. Physical appearance and age have to be taken into account. And then there’s the matter of experience.
Jon, playing Lord Darlington, came to acting only about five years ago. So does he lack experience? Felicity, playing the hugely demanding role of Lady Windermere, is still only 19 – and my own daughter played the role when she was only 16. So does her apparent lack of experience count against her?
Not at all. As Dumby says in LWF, “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” But the trick is to learn from those mistakes.
Jon puts it from his point of view. ‘Lord Darlington is teaching me a great deal. He is a much more complex character than would at first appear. On the surface, he’s very similar to Lord Illingworth in A Woman Of No Importance – whom I played a couple of years ago – but I feel he has perhaps even greater depths to discover. Lord I’s character swung from ladies’ man via arrogant bully to spoilt child, but Lord D is altogether more pleasant – he has a genuine love for Lady W, but holds it in check until he feels that her husband has behaved so badly that he is justified in declaring his intent to rescue her. The light-hearted beginning to the play, the powerful declarations of love during the ballroom scene, and the deeply emotional parting thereafter require a great deal of work to put across effectively without tipping over into melodrama, and are presenting a most enjoyable challenge. Peter’s knowledge of the play is remarkable, and his insight and guidance are proving invaluable to me in coming to know the many layers of this fascinating character.’
(Note: if a director doesn’t know the play better than all his actors put together, then he’s failing in his job.)
‘What a gem of a rôle! It gives me an opportunity to flirt outrageously in public with the most charming ladies – using some of the best chat-up lines ever written – without the risk of being thrown out of pubs and getting beaten up by incensed partners. What man could possibly ask for more?’

2006-03-20T12:32:00.000-08:00

Week 10
Apart from the four principals (Lord and Lady Windermere, Mrs Erlynne and Lord Darlington), who are caught up in the central drama of the piece, LWF is packed tight with brilliantly-drawn comic characters, from the acid wit of Mr Dumby and Cecil Graham to the monosyllabic dimness of Lady Agatha, from the brashness of the Australian Mr Hopper to the refined poison of Lady Plymdale, from the scattiness of Lady Jedburgh to the buffoonery of Lord Augustus. Even Rosalie the maid and Parker the butler are comic creations in their own right.
One of the most entertaining of these is the feather-brained Duchess of Berwick, played by Barbara – an actress I’ve worked closely with several times over the past 15 years.
She says: ‘The last time I played a Duchess was in Alice in Wonderland at the tender
age of 8. There's not a lot of difference between the two: both are imperious, gossipy, bossy, nosey women - although I must say the Duchess of Berwick is very much more upper class than t’other: a total snob!
As with the other principal characters, the Duchess goes through various mood changes from the 'kind and caring friend' who is only an informant for the best possible reasons to a completely over the top 'gusher' when a possible suitor for her daughter appears - only to show her abhorrent side when her daughter agrees to move abroad. I love the way she doesn't care
who she castigates as long as she comes out alright herself.
I think Oscar Wilde is a genius, capturing the whole double standards of the time. He never wastes a single word and all his characters are followed through.
I am enjoying working with Peter again and rehearsals, albeit hard work, are great fun. There is a wonderful camraderie in the company, and I believe it will be a great show.’

2006-03-14T11:22:00.000-08:00

Week 9
From a budgeting point of view, one of the advantages of Lady Windermere’s Fan is that there are no royalties. On the other hand, there are costumes...
But that’s no problem: royalties are invisible to the eye of everybody except an accountant, whereas the costumes give the eyes of the audience something to feast upon. From the director’s point of view, the wadrdrobe budget is money well spent.
Helen, our Wardrobe Mistress, has been sourcing the custumes to make sure they are suitably sumptuous.
“Last week Jaie (Helen’s assistant) and I took a trip to the RSC to see what the
availability of costume was for men and women. Having decided with Peter that we would set the show circa 1900, I was able to produce sufficiently period-accurate costumes for the publicity photocall by adjusting costumes from my own collection. The Oxford Drama Wardrobe have also produced some lovely outfits which, after some tender loving care, will look wonderful and considerably lessen the wardrobe bill, I hope. All I need to do now is finish measuring the cast, and it'll be full speed ahead to selection and fitting.”
On the subject of giving the audience something pleasing to look at, we’ve also this week had first sight of the set design from Peter, our designer. 1900 is right in the middle of the Art Nouveau period, and he’s based his design for chez Windermere on the clean lines of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, with a rather witty nod in the direction of a fan motif. Lord Darlington’s rooms in Act 3 will, naturally, be quite different.
Of course, this means that the job of Joanna and Kay, our Props Mistresses, becomes that little bit more exacting: the props and furniture also have to be period-specific. But they’ve already found an antique dealer who could turn out to be a ‘one-stop shop’ so, with any luck, there won’t be any last-minute scouring of junk shops to find something suitable.

2006-03-09T06:30:00.000-08:00

Week 8
Five weeks to go before we open – and we’ve already sold the equivalent of one full house!
All down, of course, to the publicity. Which means a great deal more than simply designing a poster and putting it up around the city.
It all started back in October or November, when the Playhouse spring brochure went to print. Then came the photography for the poster and the copy for the back of the flier, plus letters to schools and colleges and language schools and just about anyone whose address we have who could be interested in the show.
This week we’ve had a further photocall for three of the principals – Felicity, Clare and Ross – so that we can send out suitable photographs with press releases to every newspaper and journal in the Playhouse’s catchment area. And, at the same time, rehearsal photographs for the programme – the design and printing of which is an entirely separate exercise, and every bit as intensive.
Felicity P, who’s co-ordinating the publicity activities, enlisted the aid of the entire cast early in the week. When they weren’t on stage (we were rehearsing the ballroom scene, which involves everybody), they were frantically stuffing envelopes. Thousands of them. And, don’t forget, someone has to stick stamps on all those envelopes...
Already, an army of volunteers has been putting up posters and stocking leaflet dispensers, and that will continue until we open (it’s amazing how many posters get pulled down or covered up).
In fact, there are probably two or three times as many people involved in the background as there are on stage. As well as publicity, there’s the set design – and building it! – wardrobe, props, lighting, sound. Plus three people I simply couldn’t do without: my safety net Stage Manager, Gareth, and the ever-present Ray and Michelle, the Production Managers who co-ordinate everybody else and solve any problems that I encounter (or cause...).
In fact, the word ‘company’ in the phrase Theatre Company is every bit as important as the word ‘theatre’. And having this well-oiled machine underpinning its productions is one of the main reasons the Guild is so successful.

2006-02-27T12:03:00.000-08:00

Week 7
The role of Lady Windermere presents a very particular challenge. By far the largest role in the play, with well over 400 lines to learn, it also demands a young actress, since the action takes place on Lady W’s 21st birthday.
My own Lady W, Felicity, is actually only 19, and the youngest player in the company – but she’s rising magnificently to both the challenge and the opportunity. Her intention is to go into the Business full-time, and is currently alternating rehearsals with auditions for all the major drama schools.
She sees Lady Windermere as a significant stepping stone towards realising her ambition.
‘To perform on the Playhouse stage was a goal I set myself before I leave
Oxford, hopefully for drama school. Now, thanks to the Guild, I am going to fulfill the first of many ambitions - and in the title role, too. Bonus! Next on my list is the RSC...
However, nothing in life worth having is easy, and Lady Windermere is no exception. She’s a lovely character who is incredibly strong willed. And, during the play, she goes on a huge emotional journey - all within 24 hours. This is sometimes complicated as she can very
quickly change her mind back and forth between emotions.
As well as rehearsing, I’m also working during the day (as, unfortunately, we all have to) and auditioning for drama school. This means lots of preparation and even more lines (as if I need them!) My brain is positively buzzing with different words and emotions, and I am quite often heard talking to myself. I am sure my family think I am insane.
It is very tiring but great fun, and I am really enjoying myself - especially the scenes where I stamp my feet and play the screaming brat!’
Felicity has the talent – and the determination – to make it as an actress. And I look forward to seeing her play Mrs Erlynne in twenty years’ time.
At the RSC, of course...

2006-02-21T12:05:00.000-08:00

Week 6
Rehearsals are becoming increasingly intensive as we dig deeper and deeper into the various characters. Whereas Clare is coming to grips with the overt complexity of Mrs Erlynne, Ross has the opposite problem: revealing the depths of Lord Windermere, a man with a rigid code of honour who is tormented by a dilemma – but who cannot reveal it to anyone.
This is how he sees it:
‘Windermere is a very challenging role for me. I have never played a part that is so far removed from my own character. I would argue that Windermere is also the furthest removed of all the characters in the play from Oscar himself: the perfect late-Victorian husband and father that Oscar was unsuccessfully trying so hard to personify at the time he wrote the play. The problem, then, with acting Windermere is to stop the slippery slide into caricature. The key, of course, is to play him totally for real: there's no room for even the slightest indulgence in whimsicality. At the moment, I find I can act different aspects of Windermere - his character, his voice, his posture, his development throughout the play - but not all at the same time. When I feel I have found his character perfectly, my posture goes. When I get my posture right, I lose track of Windermere's train of thinking. It's a bit like learning to do one of those novelty plate-spinning acts - results do come, but only with determination (and rehearsal!).‘
However, Ross claims to have a secret weapon:
‘Once it’s fully grown, all responsibility for Windermere's performance will pass to the moustache that is currently growing nicely under my nose, and I’ll be able to relax and let it do all the hard work!’

2006-02-10T13:00:00.000-08:00

Week 5
Memo to self: actors are not puppets.
Moving the actors around the stage, making sure they’re in the right place at the right time, is the director’s job. Exploring motivations, reactions and emotions is a partnership between actor and director. But when it comes to getting inside the character and becoming that person, the actor is all on his or her own.
Clare, who’s playing Mrs Erlynne, describes the process.
‘Having not trodden the boards for 18 months, I was more than a little nervous to be playing such a complex character. So I reverted back to the lessons I’d learnt at drama college too many years ago and started researching the part and writing a life history for Mrs E so I could bring her past to life more vividly in my head.
She’s not easy. Her methods and moods change by the second. One moment playful, the next confrontational, the next flirtatious, and so forth. But her façade is a constant until the second half when it begins to slip as, after 20 years, she begins to care again, to love again.
At the moment we’re working slowly to mark every moment, every change. I’m finding the moments when the mask is firmly in place and when to show her real feelings, and over the weeks I’m hoping these transitions will become smoother.
It’s great, I’m loving it. We work hard and intensely at rehearsals but there’s lots of laughter and silliness, and it’s certainly never dull! I shall have to start wearing a corset in the next few weeks to improve my rubbish posture - and I’m really not looking forward to that!’
It’s a joy working with this company, seeing how determined they all are to make every moment believable, to draw their audience deep into the world they’ve created.
Last year I interviewed Stephen Unwin, artistic director of English Touring Theatre, and he was complaining that the training of so many of his actors had been so sloppy, he had to give them acting lessons. With the sort of experience and dedication – and, let’s be frank, professionalism – I’ve got in this company, that’s something I don’t have to worry about!

2006-02-08T10:42:00.000-08:00

Week 4
Directing a scene with just two actors demands a totally different approach from directing one with fourteen. Getting inside the characters remains to a large extent the same, but there’s a big difference from a technical point of view.
With just two actors, you have to walk a tightrope between having them rooted boringly to the spot and having them dinging about the stage with moves that are there simply for their own sake.
On the other hand, when the stage is full, you have to make sure that the focus remains on the lines and characters that are important to the development of the story. This is where a firm line has to be taken with actors in the background who feel uneasy about doing nothing, and start adding in bits of business – however plausible for their characters – that distract from the main focus. As I point out to them, if the audience is looking at them instead of the main action, then I’ve obviously got it wrong.
We’ve got one lovely scene where Grace (Lady Agatha) spends the entire scene being ignored. She, of course, has to be involved in the scene throughout – but mustn’t intrude. It requires a lot of discipline – and in many cases a lot of bottle – but doing nothing can frequently be very funny indeed.
The same scene involves another challenge of a somewhat unusual nature. The Duchess (Barbara) divulges information crucial to the story and, in effect, sparks off everything that happens during the rest of the play. Yet this very serious information is purveyed during a wonderfully comic sequence. Challenge: to extract the maximum comedy while driving the plot forward as clearly as possible.
Still, this week has been fun. As well as the scene I’ve just described, we did some initial work on Act 2, the ball scene. Actors crossing and recrossing the stage, constant entrances and exits, clever lines by the bucketful, comedy and intrigue – and all leading to the dramatic First Half Closer.
The more we work on this piece, the more respect I have for Wilde as a master craftsman of the theatre.

lwf

2006-02-05T06:05:00.000-08:00

Lady Windermere’s Fan
The Director’s Diary

Week 1
The auditions are over, I’ve cast the play, and now I can get down to some real work!
I hate auditions. You never know what you’re going to get. When I directed She Stoops to Conquer, I was three weeks into rehearsal before I could cast Tony Lumpkin – yet the auditions for Alice Through the Looking Glass yielded 15 potential Alices, all of whom could have done the job perfectly well.
I have a pet theory which, for the sake of this diary, we shall call the Immutable Rule of the One Short. Basically, it means that, no matter how successful your auditions, you’ll always be one short. Put on a 3-hander, and only two actors will turn up to audition. Or 25 women and one man will turn up – for a cast that incudes two men and one woman. Or you’ll have 150 auditionees for R&J, but nobody under the age of 50.
Lady Windermere’s Fan has been kind to me. Yes, I was one short: I didn’t see anyone I felt was suitable for the role of Parker, the butler. It’s not a large role, but it’s got bags of potential (remember the cliché: there are no small parts, only small actors...) But I’ve managed to tempt Bob Cambrey out of retirement – an actor I first worked with nearly 20 years ago when he was playing Falstaff, and one whom I know I can trust implicitly.
But the other reason I hate auditions is that you know you’re going to have to disappoint so many people – many of them A-list actors. Well over 50 auditioned for LWF, and I could have cast it two or three times over. However – and this, I’m sure, is a sign of the piece’s appeal - a number of actors who would normally be playing leads have agreed to take supporting roles.
It’s looking good. It’s looking exciting. And I’m looking forward to it.
Week 2
The first rehearsal is always messy. Introduce all the actors to each other (though many of them have worked together before); explain the ground rules – what I expect of them, what the Guild expects of them, and what they can expect in return; and a brief word on the way I like to work.
Then a quick warm-up (ease the muscles, get the blood circulating, push some oxygen through the brain), and then The Read-Through.
For years I didn’t have a read-through. My thinking was that the actors could read the play in their own time rather than taking up my precious rehearsal time. But then Reality tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me of my own years as an actor. Fact: actors are essentially idle (ask any parent: being on stage is much cushier than getting a real job). And, given half a chance, they’ll only ever read the scenes that they’re actually in. The read-through means that, with any luck, some of the actors will have a rough idea of the plot by the time we open...
I do my read-throughs on the hoof. The actors can enter and exit wherever they like, and I’m not looking for a peformance. But standing next to each other in a love scene is far more valuable than facing each other across a circle of chairs.
It’s at this first rehearsal that I introduce many of the actors to a culture shock. For me, Books Down is approximately halfway through the rehearsal period for principals, and earlier than that for the rest. The reason is simple: you can’t act with a book in your hand. Nor can you work adequately with rehearsal props when you’ve only got one hand free. To facilitate this, I virtually write off the week after Books Down. As I tell the cast – and I genuinely mean it – I don’t care how many prompts they take, even if it’s every line. But no books are allowed on stage. (One of the benefits is that it really concentrates the mind. I don’t mind if an actor takes a hundred prompts during this week – but the embarrassment factor is invaluable...)
Still, that’s several weeks away. In the meantime, there’s an empty stage that has to be filled with character, action and laughter.
I hate auditions – but I love directing!

Week 3
The usual problems for this time of year – though, to be fair, I knew all about most of them before we started. The Duchess of Berwick and Parker are on holiday somewhere warm; Mrs Erlynne is tied up at a conference all week; Lord Darlington is in panto; and Lady Windermere has flown across to Paris for a modelling job With limited opportunities for doing anything useful, I cancelled the rehearsal and spent the time working on some of the other things a director has to do: a list of props, sourcing the music for the ball scene, writing a progress report for Guild News.
But we’ve been getting some very good work done. I’ve directed Felicity (Lady W) before – in Alice – but Ross (Lord W) is new to both of us. So, from scratch, we have to create a believable marriage, a marriage that starts out idyllic, suffers a potentially fatal blow, very nearly falls apart, and then returns to stability, though with both parties wiser for the experience – all within a 24-hour time-frame. And this is all complicated by having to mould two young 21st Century actors into their 19th Century counterparts: a pair of ultra-conventional, Victorian, self-confessed Puritans. Body language is crucial, and my initial task is to pull everything back to a sort of repressed stillness, so that we can show the cracks without going over the top.
And here I’m lucky. Felicity’s posture is suberb (Clare – Mrs Erlynne – is frankly envious of it), and Ross is working very hard to produce exactly the right stance for his character. The difficulty for the actor, of course, is not only to stand and move correctly, but to look as if that’s the way they’ve been moving all their life.
LWF is a very funny play – but the laughter is built on the back of a Victorian social melodrama. At the moment, we’re working on the intense bits. But next week, with the entire cast available, we’ll be able to work on the ball-scene – a scene that crackles with good lines and comic situations.
Next week should be fun-time.